Bob Fry wrote:
Not my statement. See
http://www.longbets.org/4

What sayeth the group wisdom? I think eventually there will be
pilotless aircraft, the question is when.

Hmmph. I was told in 1980 that by the year 2000 everybody would have
flying cars and personal rocket belts would be practical. Everything
would be run with nuclear power and we would have permanent colonies on
the moon and Mars. Disease and starvation would be a thing of the past.
Men would dress in tight jumpsuits and women in short skirts and
everyone would wear little space emblems. We would all eat food with
the consistency of paste. Robots would be in every household.

OTOH, I was also told that we would now be living in post-apocalyptic
society barely surviving a radioactive, half frozen world. Every nation
would be under totalitarian rule and war would be a permanent state of
affairs, as men dressed in battle armor fought it out with laser cannon
and robot tanks.

Maybe all those things will happen someday. Maybe it is all a question
of when. But given the track record of people being able to predict
things 25 years into the future, I am not going to hold my breath
waiting for pilotless airplanes.