Your crystal ball is probably as good as anybody else's.

What I would tell you is this:

Airframers "study" lots of things, all the time. Evolutionary ideas, revolutionary ideas, things like supersonic transports and blended wing body transports and ____________.

And despite all that "study"...Boeing just announced the 737 Max 10, aka Czar Guppy, aka Seattle Sewer Tube, as their latest airliner. An evolution of an airframe that first flew FIFTY YEARS AGO.

There's also FAR Part 25, which regulates certification of transport aircraft. TL;DR - transports have to have LOTS of redundancy, and an autonomous airliner ain't your quadcopter with "return to home". Single pilot airliners with remote-pilot backup will come WELL before autonomous airliners...and the technology simply isn't here yet to support and secure such reliably.

I'd also tell you freight trains, to this day, still have two crewmembers - an engineer and a conductor. Operating in an environment FAR less dynamic than an aircraft.

I wouldn't go making career decisions based upon click-generating "news" articles that are long on hope and short on reality.