You know where this is leading don’t you? The all chimpanzee remake of Top Gun. I’d wager that in some scenes the difference would be undetectable.
I saw an interview with an F-16 pilot after a crash near Phoenix and he remarked tha the F-16 was too easy to fly because of the fly by wire system. This doesn’t mean that joe FlightSim could hop in one and take out some MiGs but that he might be able to keep it in the air a while befor turning it inside out. He made the point that for most manevers you didn’t so much fly it as point it and that because of that the plane didn’t present enough of a challenge for neophyte pilots to improve their skills for difficult situations.
If we reduce flying to a plane that keeps you from getting out of envelope or breaking the airframe while above maneuvering speed it won’t be asking a lot of the ape-pilot, let’s call him say… Maverick for now ;), if we just want him to keep the greasy side down. Maverick wouldn’t have to touch the throttle for level flight and I’m sure the fly by wire could probably auto coordinate the rudder so he really only has to deal with a two axis stick. A simplified attitude indicator gives him a horizon to look at. The question becomes does an ape have the spatial reasoning to be able to complete the feedback loop from display to stick? Of course at this level he’s doing nothing that wasn’t done decades ago with a Sperry autopilot so can you really call it flying?