As is often the case with new, ground breaking technology, it'll be the military that leads the way. There are obvious benefits to getting rid of the pilot on military aircraft - not only do you not put the pilot in harms way, no pilot means lower cost/lighter weight and increased maneuverability since you don't need to worry about the g-loads on the pilot. Heck, with that fancy helmet on the F-35 that lets you look through the aircraft, all it would need today is a secure, high speed data link. But you don't want your $100 million aircraft to crash if you lose the data link, so there would be simple, return to base routine. But eventually that simple, return to base routine would get increased capabilities, eventually getting strike/dog fighting capability and finally fully autonomous. Eventually, when unmanned military aircraft have a better safety record than the piloted ones, there will be the final push to extend it to commercial aircraft. It won't happen soon, but I have little doubt it will eventually happen.
As Ian notes, we're not talking today's FMC and auto throttle/auto thrust type systems - for the most part they are created assuming human intervention. A better example would be FADEC or FBW - systems that can't readily be over-ridden by humans.