You're right of course, but the net effect was the a/t didn't provide the protection the crew had assumed.
Protection is there to try to avoid an accident if the crew make a mistake or miss something. It is not there to become the normal way of operating the aircraft.
If both of these crews had been 'flying' the aircraft, as their duties require them to, both accidents would not have happened. Crews are
required to monitor airspeed at all times & to ensure the power is set correctly to maintain the required airspeed. If this basic requirement of flying had been done, neither aircraft would have been involved in an accident.
Not so many years ago, the concern among aviation professionals was that that the manufacturers were designing too much automation into their aircraft & that that was a threat to both safety & pilot careers. It seems a little ironic that these days a lot of pilots are concerned that there is not enough automation on the flight deck & that it does not fly the aircraft 100% accurately, all by itself. Perhaps pilotless aircraft are closer than I used to think & that part of the reason for that is that some pilots seem to want to design themselves out of the flight deck.