In aviation there's a saying, "Aviate, Navigate, Communicate" which describes the hierarchy of things to pay attention to while piloting an aircraft.

Autopilot can be thought of better as "auto-aviate". That is to say, if there is already a navigation plan, the aircraft can follow that plan. Simple autopilots just keep the wings level, others can hold an altitude and change heading. More sophisticated ones can change altitude or even fully land the plane.

All of those things, however, require people to manage the "Navigate" part. "Aviate" is a deterministically solved problem, at least in normal flight operations. As you point out we trust autopilots today, including on (nearly) every single commercial flight.

LLMs are a poor alternative to "aviate", but they could be part of a better flight management automation package. The parent article tries to use the LLM to aviate, with predictable results.

If paired with a capable auto-pilot (not the relatively basic one on that C-172), the LLM could figure out how to operate the FMS and take you from post take-off to final approach and aid in situational awareness.

Currently, I don't think there is a commercial solution for GA aircraft that could say, "Ok, I'm 20NM from KVNY, but there are three people ahead of me in the pattern, so I have to do a right 360 before descending and joining downwind on 34L".

Having an LLM propose that course of action and tell the autopilot to execute on it definitely would be an improvement to GA safety.