What's the future for air-ground communications?

Humans are not very good at predicting the future. How many of our parents would have predicted self-driving, electric cars? And yet here we are, on the edge of a complete transformation in road travel.

Neil deGrasse predicts that by 2050 (yes, 27 years from now!):

“… self-driving electric vehicles will fully replace all cars and trucks on the road.”

So what is the future for air-ground communications in aviation? In 2050, will two humans still communicate by talking over a VHF radio? Will ~75% of pilots and controllers worldwide still be required to speak English as a foreign language?

Technology is already being used to enhance, and sometimes replace, verbal communication in aviation. Two examples are Controller Pilot Data Link Communications (CPDLC) and message boards at de-icing facilities.

Voice recognition and text-to-speech software has improved significantly in recent years. Likewise, translation programs for both voice and text.

Will English remain the common language of aviation? Or will our grandchildren one day regard this as ‘quaint’ and all pilots and controllers will simply speak their native languages and technology will do the rest? (For example, a Russian pilot transits a message in Russian, it is received in Chinese by a Chinese controller who replies in Chinese and it is transmitted in Russian back to the pilot). The technology to do this has existed for some time.

Will communication remain voice-only ('radiotelephony' as we call it today) or will pilots and controllers soon be able to see each other too?

Or will human speech no longer be a part of the communication process at all?

It can be tempting to think that we will always need human-to-human communication in aviation; that a human voice can convey tone, intent and nuance in a way that technology cannot.

But remember too that we are genetically hardwired to be wary of change. Our brains typically interpret change as a threat and release the hormones for fear, fight, or flight. Our bodies actually protect us from change.

Today, many of us would be nervous about riding in a driverless car. But soon driverless cars will be safer, more efficient, and more accessible than traditional cars and everyone will use them.

The difficult part is deciding when the time is right to make the switch. When is the technology ‘good enough’? (It does not need to be perfect; it just needs to be better than the current system).

The same applies to different ways of communicating in aviation. And so that we don't forget … currently, communication is a factor in ~70% of incidents / accidents.

Surely we can improve on this. But how?