More like a dog to gently nudge the pilot if he is relying on a system that isn&#x27;t working. Most issues I&#x27;ve read about happened when the systems either weren&#x27;t engaged properly or automatically disengaged because their operating parameters weren&#x27;t met anymore, suddenly forcing the pilots to take control.<p>Example Air France 447, where (presumably) the airspeed sensors where blocked by ice, which lead to the autopilot to disengage. There is also the theory that the pilots then made some of their mistakes based on the belief that the avionics would stop them from bringing the plane in an unsafe state and didn&#x27;t realize that the system wasn&#x27;t able to do so with missing information. (I hope I&#x27;m presenting this correctly, but that&#x27;s what I remember reading afterwards)<p>There is also the training aspect: if a system takes care of something 99,9% of the time, the pilot is less experienced in the 0,1% where it doesn&#x27;t. There is a reason the safest airline pilots often fly way smaller aircraft as a hobby and get some instinct for manual flying there.