Pilotless: This Is Your Robot Speaking

Once we’ve accepted driverless cars, what about pilotless airliners? Is that a bridge too far?

Peter Garrison

Friday, June 27, 2025 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

There’s a difference between remotely-piloted aircraft and completely autonomous ones. [Adobe Stock]

Key Takeaways:

The increasing acceptance of driverless cars suggests a similar future for pilotless airliners, building on existing autonomous technologies in aviation.
While human pilots are lauded for "miraculous" emergency responses, they are also prone to errors, prompting the question of whether non-human control systems could perform better.
Advanced AI, leveraging machine learning and neural networks, can be trained on thousands of routine and emergency scenarios, potentially surpassing human pilots in judgment, precision, and consistent performance due to vast "experience" and lack of human fallibility.
The author anticipates that as pilotless aircraft are adopted for military and cargo, public trust will grow, leading to a future where human pilots are no longer needed for commercial flights.

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I’m not sure what’s gained by putting ride-share drivers out of work, but driverless cars have become a common sight in Los Angeles. I seldom drive any distance without encountering one of Waymo’s white Jaguar SUVs, its roof and fenders barnacled with spinning sensors and its front seats empty.I’ve followed them in traffic for miles—they drive well. I’ve tried to book a ride, but the hilly neighborhood of narrow, winding streets in which I live lies just outside their comfort zone. Give them another six months.

A few years ago, a survey found almost 80 percent of respondents unwilling to ride in a driverless car. I don’t know what the fraction would be today, but I’ll bet it’s shrunk. One of my least adventurous friends reported that after a few minutes of a Waymo ride she felt perfectly comfortable—a triumph of experience over imagination.