First we need to agree on terms. One accepted machine design definition states that ‘thinking is the manipulation of memory’. We think when we analyze memories in relation to other memories (I guess when we sit and ‘think about something’ that happened) and when we apply memories to current input (the aircraft is stalling, I apply training memories to solve the problem). So the poll question is badly formed: of course a computer can “think like a pilot”, all it has to do is manipulate memory. So that’s a definite YES but not to the most pertinent question. Which is: what if something happens which doesn’t fit our stash of training/memories we can apply? These are the so-called ‘corner cases’ which other commenters raise. They require some specific design to define some handling of unexpected situations, neglect of which have famously led to fatalities in the ‘smart’ aircraft systems now in use. The Airbus A400M crash in Seville is an example of really bad embedded control initialization and exception handling. Until we can get those foundational aspects right, piling AI of any kind on top of them will do little good. The core of the design, including power on self test and runtime exception handling must be robust or the whole design is brittle. And how do we test and verify that the design is robust? There are methods and tools but few universally applied standards: witness the 737Max debacle. It’s a messy problem with no clean solutions. That doesn’t make it insoluble, just very challenging. I am an industrial embedded control systems designer and forensic engineer and it still sometimes surprises me how many unexpected ways things can fail. We’ll get there first with self-driving cars where the bar is lower: 37,000 motor vehicle fatalities in 34,000 incidents (in 2016). At least computers don’t get drunk or fall asleep. Driving is a perhaps simpler 2D problem vs 3D in the air. But look at the SpaceX automated docking with the ISS. Solutions to some of this may be out of the scope of our current experiences, just like many of us didn’t imagine the internet or cell phones… or crossing the Atlantic nonstop.