Automation is of course not the cause of the accident, but the accident is a good demo of why good automation and it's correct use enhances safety. The captain was very experienced and had a good record, and yet he made the fundamental mistake of failing to look at his airspeed for a long time, just at a time where his choices had made airspeed monitoring especially important. Classic human frailty. Like it or not, if he had engaged IAS mode which, one would have though, would be normal practice for flying an approach in marginal weather, the accident would not have happened.
The passengers wouldn't care why the accident wouldn't have happened, they just didn't want it to happen, and so foolish ideas that we should fly these sorts of things manually in order to maintain our skills, would be ridiculed and rightly so. Bottom line is that humans make mistakes, automation helps to reduce the impact of such mistakes. But only if it is used sensibly.
Let's hope that the 4 lives at least have a legacy of demonstrating to all other pilots why using a vertical mode on the cyclic near Vy is such a foolish thing to do.