End of the day...they won't be the ones who decide if this stuff really takes off or not....Plenty of other factors to consider...Regulations, political and social factors all will have a influence.
Ultimately if people aren't comfortable with fully autonomous planes, Airlines won't be too keen on buying them, and r&d may take a different direction. Plenty of people worry about flying now, even thou they wont think twice about the drive to the airport...good luck trying to get them on some autonomous airliner. It would take a brave airline to try it.
In my opinion, it would be wise to keep 1 person up front. Crashes tend to be expensive and bad
PR. But if the apparent "experts" are right in regards to a massive amount of jobs being automated in whatever amount of years ...I'd say the pilots job as it is currently would be more at risk of airlines losing sales, then layoffs due to a massive amount of the population being out of a income and unable to travel as opposed to being automated....Sometimes you have to wonder about the wisdom of all this automation and where it ends up...no point automating everything if no one has a income to buy stuff and companies ending up shooting themselves in the foot.
Who knows. Nobody has a crystal ball. Maybe one day, there will only be one pilot up front on short haul...Timeframe-anyones guess. But just because something is new, doesn't necessarily mean it is going to be the next big thing...Crystal Pepsi?