Saletan's article hinges on the belief that the description of what goes on in a cockpit is accurate -- but if you read longtime pilot Patrick Smith's article at Salon, it's clearly wrong. His reaction to CNN's description:

When I read that, I thought my head was going to explode. Rarely have I come across a more misleading statement in the mainstream media when it comes to flying. This is arguably the most grotesque caricature of cockpit automation I have ever encountered...

At another point, he comments on the idea that very little is going on in the cockpit:

And the cockpit can be a busier place than you might imagine, even late at night over the middle of the ocean: There are ATC and company position reports to transmit and record, weather reports to check, arrival procedures to review and plan, aircraft systems to monitor, logbook issues to take care of, and so on.

... Even the most routine and "automated" flight remains subject to countless contingencies and a tremendous amount of input from the crew. Yes, tremendous.

Something he said in the article -- that if automation were removed, the pilot wouldn't be less likely to be bored, but would be exponentially more exhausted -- actually sounds like it would be the best reason to add automation to cars... That is, it wouldn't free us up to mess around with other things when we should be watching the road; it would drastically reduce driver fatigue and the dangerous accidents associated with it.