This is Your Captain Speaking

 It's been suggested that airplanes fly themselves. It's even been presumed that the pilots will one day be obsolete, a quaint yester-toy like phones with chords and abacuses. Patrick Smith on salon.com (http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2009/11/19/askthepilot342/index.html) writes a weekly article called, Ask the Pilot.

As a pilot himself, his weekly article focused today on the recent American Airways flight and emergency landing into the Hudson River. Various 'experts' are arguing about how the pilots are mostly there to push buttons and man the battle stations should a catastrophe occur. In the future, some say, planes will fly themselves with all of our technological advances and such. 

My god, I hope not. 

Can you imagine a completely automated airplane? I can't even trust my toaster to toast appropriately a level 4 toasting without my supervision. Who the hell wants to be some tens of thousands of feet in the air with nothing more than a Texas Instrument at the helm?

I don't care how advanced we may become, there is no algorithm in existence that can match a human being's mind, intuition, or improvisation. Mr. Smith is right, and I highly suggest and admire his writing. I'll have to check out his book, too. 

Besides, haven't you seen AI? Battlestar Gallactica? The robots will turn on us if we give them the chance!