How can I level up my AI crew?

Solution 1:

How do I level up pilots to get those stars?

Following this forum thread, it appears that the answer simply is

• "have them fly things around" or
• "use a more advanced pilot to set the default behaviour, then swap to an unexperienced pilot "

The latter seems like an oversight by the developers and will likely be patched out. So it would appear that the most "efficient" way to train unexperienced pilots is to either manually command them around until they have enough experience or have a dedicated miner that will just train new pilots with auto-mining until they can auto-trade.

But then, if you have money, you can just buy a new ship at a dock and immediately sell it (but not the auto-equipped pilot!) as those tend to have the necessary 3 stars for auto-trading by default...