I tend to go back to early days of North Sea flying (S61s, so nothing automatic at all) and view the automatics as a "competent co-pilot, lacking initiative." If you have them flying the aircraft for you then you have an awful lot more capacity to deal with all the other jobs such as checking weather, sorting out divs, briefing on the landing site/approach plate, sorting out customer hassles, you can get on with your job whilst keeping a watching brief on what the "co-pilot" is doing.
When converting on to my current type the trainers spent a lot of time on the automatics and it was a huge help when I was let loose on my own, but I have flown on the same type with others who went through the conversion course with a different provider and who struggled with the automation.
Thinking back to my first paragraph, does anyone remember Dave humble in the BIH S61 sim acting as "incompetent co-pilot with initiative"?
SND