Originally Posted by
Musician
You also need to consider the question: if the same effort was spent on making automation safer was spent on giving huamns the tools to make their own activities safer, what would the result be?
No, you don't, as this will never be a valid question. The effort is only spent on automation in the short term as it lowers cost in the long term. Money is the motivating factor, not safety. Aviation is made
relatively safe, not
absolutely safe, as the safest form of aviation is not to aviate at all.
The 2 person cockpit of today will shrink to the one person cockpit of tomorrow, as surely as it shrank from 3 to 2. The survivor might retain the title captain, but they'll be increasingly deskilled into some sort of 'flight manager' overseeing the flight in general, whilst the responsibility for dealing with unexpected events takes places on the ground.
True autonomy is still a while off, but high levels of automation and remote operation and oversight is far closer, and driven by reasons of cost alone.