Ya... Somebody made the comment "Planes fly themselves" Planes are only on auto pilot after they reach cruising altitude and only if the trip is smooth. During turbulence, takeoff and landing the pilot is in full control. And he has a human backup.
Well, that’s not entirely correct - most large commercial airline pilots will switch on the autopilot literally seconds after calling, “Gear up”. These systems are designed to be left on during turbulence; they are exceptionally fault-tolerant because
people will die if they are not. A lot of time, testing, and unfortunate accidents have paved the way for these systems to be remarkably reliable. It is rare that these systems will randomly disengage (RIP AF 447) or fail. It is a different story, however, on smaller planes where it can be safer to disengage the autopilot and manually fly.
And this is my beef with most automakers: they are treating software like a second-class citizen. Just look at all the software issues these newer vehicles have. They need to treat every aspect of their systems as life-and-death. I hope they’re not sitting there going, “Meh … if Super Cruise drives off a dock and kills a family of four … it’s just a family of four. It’s not like it’s a 737 or something.”