I'll attempt to add to what's been said and not just repeat.
It's hard not to jump to certain conclusions about this accident as this thread plainly shows. Before the investigators do their work, we're in the dark.
But to expand on what's been said and maybe give a focus to all the conjecture, I don't know if anyone's looked at the work of Dr. Charles Billings, former Chief Scientist at the NASA/Ames Research Centre. He put forward the idea of human-centered automation. To summarise, the basic premise is that the pilot/pilots are responsible for the safety of the flight. The axiom that flows from this is that the pilots must remain in command/control of their flights.
However, and this is the interesting bit I feel, in order to achieve the above, the pilots must be actively involved, the operators must be adequately informed and the automated systems must be predictable (my italics).
Leading on from this, it's interesting to note that the FAA have summarised two aircraft companies as having the following design philosophies near the top in a list of priorities:
Company 1: both crewmembers are ultimately responsible for the safe conduct of the flight.
Company 2: automation must not lead the aircraft out of the safe flight envelope and it should maintain the aircraft within the normal flight envelope. (source: Orlady and Barnes).
I'll let you decide which company is which.
It's easy for us to gloss over no.1 as stating the obvious, but it's crucial that pilots are aware of this philosophy so that they understand how they must approach and use the automatics.
(Similar to that page of explanation at the start of the QRH, easy to skim over, but again crucial to comprehension of what's expected of us when dealing with a non-normal).
I feel we will hear more of this in the weeks to come.