I don't accept that it's difficult to program an aircraft to revert to basic attitude flying when there's a pitot/static problem,
Fair dinkum are you kidding? And then what? The aeroplane doesn't know where it is, what it's doing, what speed it's doing, or where it needs to go! It doesn't know the quickest way out of the environment it's in. It doesn't know what other traffic is around, it doesn't know where the nearest airport is, it doesn't know whether the conditions are suitable for it to go there anyway.
Automation is a tool and like the hammer in the previous analogy of paying the engineer $1 to hit the engine and $99 to know where to hit it. Automation is just a really complicated hammer that pilots use to hit the problem to solve it. Air France were derelict in ensuring that their crew weren't properly trained in how to use it. You're being derelict in thinking that the tool can do the job always intended for the person doing the thinking.