- Plane loses radio communication on final approach and ignores go-around orders, lands on occupied runway as ATC gets others out of the way [1]
- Guy steals a plane and takes off without permission [2]
- Someone left some cones on a runway at JFK [3]
- Door blows off aircraft [4]
- Some dude runs across the runways [5]
- Pregnant woman giving birth on flight [6]
- Student pilot freaks out, ATC calms her down and gets her instructor on frequency [7]
- Earthquake [8]
- Pilot hits a deer [9]
- Bomb threat on board, pilots decide to evacuate on the tarmac after no help arrives in ~1h [10]
Some situations have probably happened before, somewhere. Some others are completely new. I would highly recommend that you watch these videos (they're all relatively short) and genuinely ask yourself whether our current state-of-the-art AI models would be able to successfully handle these situations in the short timeframe required to do so. Let alone the fact that by AI we mean text models, so I'm not sure how they would integrate with terrain information, real-time radar data, arrival/departure routes, etc.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what control towers do. They're not there to simply observe planes do their thing and intervene if they get too close. They actively handle the traffic, and this task requires human pattern recognition and cross-domain reasoning skills in a matter of seconds, and the technology to replace this is simply not there yet. If you still disagree, I'd love to learn which technologies you'd apply to this problem and how they would compose with each other in order to achieve the same outcomes as in the cases I linked.
Of course, this is not to say that ATC shouldn't be made safer and more automated wherever possible. Particularly in the US, where equipment is severely outdated and some dubious regulations allow their ATCs to handle runways and give clearances in a way that would not be allowed in Europe and have already resulted in more than a few close calls. These are all valid concerns, but IMO they can't be extrapolated to "all ATC services can and should be automated".
I fly often, and I for one feel safer (at least, with our current technology) knowing that there are humans in the cockpit and in the control tower who can react and take control when unexpected stuff happens.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXNWwKx9c1o
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LLmF9tZoEE
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmywjMQDbos
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ma0JzO43Ig
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZviKoEKAaw
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pZ3VOPlarw
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgc2Wh4cOgo
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o80cNJ_XhX0