Carruthers - With respect, as one who flies less and less but actively drives certain aspects of aircraft automation, I feel a need to take some issue with the philosophy behind your rhetorical question: how do you propose stopping the relentless march of automation from eroding your skills?
The skill of cajoling a particular revenue aircraft aloft and back to terra firma is partly intellectual, partly mechanical. It is true that 21st century automation is likely to take over increasing amounts of the mechanical aspect as technology and supporting investment advance. At some point in aircraft systems evolution, the controls will become so squoggy that you can no longer find those sweet spots where everything works just right in a certain case. Sad, but probably inevitable. After the techies realize that controls skill still plays a useful part, they may start putting real manual discretion back in.. about anno 2250, methinks.
The bright side, from p.o.v. of aviation employment, is that the need for competent aircrew will be stable or increase in regard to the intellectual skills of putting all the pieces of flight operations together, making sense of them, and still having some reserve capacity to handle all the possible contingencies that can arise along the way. The smarter the machine, the more valuable the person who makes it work. It will continue for a long while to be a formidable challenge. with ongoing changes in the necessary skill set. From a technological viewpoint, it seems unlikely this will lead to an overall decline in Pilot compensation or openings as much as the trend to ever larger aircraft is doing. Smarter aircraft wll require greater intelligence, better systems knowledge, and more extensive skills from the crew. Not exactly the march to obsolescence.