DB I agree totally, technology and automation will continue to develop. There needs to be significant work done on establishing the rule-set for "safe" automation. Automation in my opinion needs to be immersive or transparent i.e. the pilot should have full intuitive understanding of what the automation is doing or should have no need to understand in order to resolve any situation. Over the last couple of decades we appear to have reached a point between the two which is worse. This results in the pilot being suddenly required to take full control of the situation without the situational or state awareness built by being connected to the actions that led up to that scenario. Massive increase in workload while simultaneously being robbed of the automation that could reduce the workload.
Strangely enough it seems more important to consider the human factors the more we automate things.