Are we forgetting that it was a pilot in 2009 on US Airways Flight 1549 that safely landed the plane after striking a flock of geese during its initial climbout only to be ditched into the Hudson River shortly after. If a pilot was not in the plane at the time, no computer would have been able to save the plane.
Typically a pilot will turn off the autopilot around 1000 feet and then do the rest for descent and subsequent landing. On takeoff, most pilots will fly to around 10,000 feet, some to cruise altitude before turning on the autopilot. There are some tasks on modern day planes that cannot be currently done without a pilot (at least not safely).
We have to remember things like autopilot still require manual input from the pilot and cockpit crew to get from its departure point to its destination. A pilot doesn't just fly a plane out of an airport, press a couple of buttons and then do nothing for the rest of the flight, this is a misconception perpetrated by the media and so-called experts who have never flown a plane in their life. Autopilot is merely a tool, much like a machine keeping a patient breathing and their blood flowing in the operating theatre is a tool for surgeons. The machines need to be calibrated, have their data input and be closely monitored much like a pilot does on a plane, even with autopilot engaged.
While I applaud the forward thinking from people like Steve Jurvetson, statements like "Planes are mostly already flown on autopilot already" would be strongly disagreed with any pilot you ask. No two flights are the same and all flights are made up of individual and manual decisions from the pilot and crew. If a pilotless plane were something that could be a reality, the airline industry which has been struggling for years now to keep costs down amidst rising fuel costs would have already partially integrated this or started to cut down on the number of pilots they hire.
I would like to see a pilotless plane decide what to do when the landing gear fails and an emergency landing needs to be made. I would like to see what happens when a tire blows on a high-speed take off and the plane has to make an emergency landing, or what happens when a plane has to make an emergency detour over rocky terrain.
You would still need people to operate these planes remotely, what happens when contact is lost with a plane and it finds itself flying without a pilot at 35,000 feet who can manually take control of the plane and land it? Is Steve forgetting that a pilot would effectively be replaced with someone in a call centre type building sitting at a computer terminal remotely programming commands and programming things like runway codes and other things into the plane?
Some things just can't and should never be replaced. Is modern day technology meant to replace doctors? Every time a new device intended to help keep a patient alive is created, is its intent to aide or replace a doctor? Of course not. People would never agree with replacing doctors with machines completely.
Looking to eliminate drivers on the ground is one thing, because ground transportation is far more dangerous than air transportation. I agree with driverless cars because we already have the data and vehicle trips thanks to mapping data and technology mean they are predictable to a certain degree. Air travel is the safest kind of travel there is, fatalities and accidents have been consistently going down year after year, the number of accidents with fatalities in the last 10 years on Western commercial airlines can be counted with both hands.
Replacing pilots in commercial aircraft is something that will not happen in my lifetime, or perhaps ever. It is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard. Not everything can or should be automated for the sake of automating them.