This is such a strange comment section.

Airplane autopilot is more like the cruise control feature in your car, not a self-driving computer that does everything for the pilots while they sit back.

Car autopilot and airplane autopilot don't share much in common other than the word "autopilot"

Modern auto pilot and flight management computer combos can fly way-points and perform full Cat III auto lands.

I’m not suggesting the pilots are sitting there doing fuck-all, or that they are not necessarily.

I think what the automate ATC advocates are suggesting is to bring ATC in to the 21st century.

Yes, and that's what the FAA NextGen program has been doing incrementally since 2003. There are probably ways to accelerate it but it seems like most of the "automate ATC advocates" are simply ignorant and haven't done their homework.

https://www.faa.gov/nextgen

Thanks for that link too. I wasn’t aware of the extent to which all those is already underway.

My knowledge is mostly limited to a casual watching of the aviation YouTube boffins.

Airplane autopilots are basically just cruise control.

You still have a human in the loop double checking everything constantly and stepping in as soon as something isn’t routine (which is actually quite frequently).