great attitude,
Tex
The best I ever came up with is that the bus helps me doing things that I can do well already, but is of little use when things go wrong.
Make no mistake, folks here, we single-seaters used the A/P, but we used it to reduce workload and not sit there and "monitor". So I flew almost 2,000 hours in a jets without an A/P, and another 1,500 with a nice A/P, and maybe another 600 with really good A/P features ( mach hold, coupled ILS approaches, even turns directed by GCI to find a target). The big thing was I never used the sucker as a routine way of doing business except on long flights and at constant altitude/heading. Gotta tellya that in crappy weather, and diverting to another field, that the A/P allowed us to find the new approach plate, change IFF, coordinate with wingman, etc. Still had to "monitor", but we didn't have all the cosmic FMS that helps ( but still turns the wrong way as in the Cali accident).
As Tex has opined, the sucker is great for normal ops, but sucks when things go awry. Hell, my Shuttle buddies used the A/P until hitting the heading alignment circle. First 15 or so minutes was 'cause the A/P was faster than them and followed the prescribed trajectory more accurately. I can understand that. But I will guarantee those guys could have followed a good flight director all the way down.
Only HAL help we had in the Viper was when AoA got above 29 or 30 degrees, and then it helped with directional control to keep us outta a spin. Unfortunately, our cee gee was so far aft that all that resulted was settling into the classic "deep stall", heh heh.
Guess it's just a frame of mind for many of us here, but I have grave feelings about simply becoming a "monitor" versus being a "pilot".