IIRC, the demise of the DBA has been prognosticated going all the way back to SQL Server 2000 and the Database Tuning Adviser...
Seems like every time MS releases some new ground breaking technology,  I just get the impression that they've lost the plot and all the new innovations are being driven by the latest it/marketing buzzwords without any consideration what their current customer base is actually asking for.
How many instances are using any of the following?:
Elastic Pools,
Stretch Databasexs
In Memory OLTP
Graph Databases
R language functionality
the list can go on...

I'm not saying this stuff isn't cool or interesting but I'd be shocked if more that 2% of MS's customer base is using any of it. So, a) why are we being forced to pay for it and b) why are these things taking priority over basic functionality?
To this day, I'm of the opinion that 2012 was the single greatest new release... for no other reason than the expansion of the set windowed functions and the introduction of window frames.

Also, rather than introducing Azure Machine Learning as a new buzz word/feature,why not actually apply machine learning to query tuning and/or plan optimization?
Why are we still, to this day, living with "good enough" execution plans? It seems like, if just a small portion of the efforts being directed into features no one is asking for, were directed into actually improving the core product, everyone would be happier.
Before we let MS off the hook by saying it's impossible to test millions of possible plan combinations quickly, how about we say that we let them have it for ad-hoc queries but demand better for stored procedures?

Also, have a look at this... GTC 2018 Keynote with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang
Given the processing power being delivered by these new GPUs, it should be not only possible to test millions (if not billions) of possible plan combinations, it should also be able to offer up revere engineered rewritten (but functionally equivilant) t-sql scripts.I