The proliferation of autopilots and lowcost GPS nav systems has created a generation of pilots that would have a hard time flying with a map, compass and watch.
Yeah, the same argument over and over. We beat the Germans in WW1, we beat them again in WW2, and the great men who did that are still running the CAA and never realised that if the Russians had decided to invade they would not have picked a VMC day, so the RAF's fantastic post-WW2 daytime precision map+stopwatch nav capability was luckily never put to the test ....
Last year a Malibu pulled it's wings off because the gyro driving the autopilot failed.
No, I don't think so. The slew rate of an autopilot is limited to a lot less than you could drive the yoke manually. What really happened (if indeed there was anything wrong with the AP at all, and reliably thus determined post-accident) is that the pilot lost the plot / did not monitor his systems / etc.
Always use the best tools for the job.