You realize most of these planes already recieve clearances via text on the acars/datacom right? It's a simple as pushing command instructions and pilot requests thru a system the pilots already have onboard. In fact, you'd have to talk to an oceanic sector center guy, but I think they already do this to an extent on the big transoceanic flights. Again, I'm not talking siri and Alexa taking and making commands here, because yes voice to text would be a shit show.
And again, no, you can't do this job better than a computer. Sorry hate to break it to you, we aren't special. Being a controller doesn't take good will hunting, beautiful mind- level mental skills. It's just task management and knowing rules to play the game by. Computers are really really good at task management and acting within a set of parameters. In fact that's maybe a computers greatest strength over a human brain. It wouldn't know how to break the rules to begin with.
The individual tasks we do when broken down to their bases are not near the complexity that would overwhelm even a pretty basic computer program. As we all know the complexity in sorting most air traffic problems out is a) volume and b) being able to do more than one thing at a time (multitasking/task switching). Computers beat the human brain at those things big time, as well as being given sets of rules to play by and doing things inside those parameters.
You don't need AI. It doesn't have to "think", just do what we already know how to do. Just a good program would get it done. AI is about thinking on its own and doing things autonomously and making its own rules. Certainly an air traffic AI system would probably be even more effecient, but that's not what we are talking and not what's needed. Automation of tasks is a completely different thing than machine learning and thinking and absolutely feasible with current tech.
As far as rollout within most current controllers careers.... The computing strength is there. The data transfer tech is there. It's a matter of system development and implementation, which yes, in .gov time can be decades, I agree. That doesn't make it out of the realm of possibility for someone who is fairly new who will have a 2 to 3 decade career. I mean I'm 7 years in and fully expect to see the beginnings of this before I retire.
Controllers who think they are special mental snowflakes whose job is safe from automation are fooling themselves, sorry.