The pilot is there to feed the dog, the dog is there to bite the pilot if he touches any of the controls.

Today, we're just about there. Autonomous unmanned aircraft have been flying for a long time now, fighting our wars and patrolling our borders. On paper, at least, we already have the technology to take the humans out of the cockpit and prevent tragedies like last week's Germanwings crash in the French Alps, which investigators believe may have been caused by a suicidal pilot.

Full-blown autonomous flight is still a long ways away for passenger planes, but there is one piece of technology with the power to automatically take control of the airplane when it's in danger of hitting the ground—exactly the kind of thing that could have stopped the Germanwings Airbus A320 from slamming into a mountain, killing all 150 people aboard.