That aircraft was mostly landed by the Airbus stability control system. The pilot's job was to make the decision to land it there. Read the book "Fly by Wire", by William Langewiesche.

And no autopilot would intentionally ram a plane into the side of a mountain.

These edge-cases are uninteresting IMO.

"These edge-cases are uninteresting IMO."

On the contrary, these edge cases are by far the most interesting thing. Not just tabloid-interesting, but in terms of generating usable data.

On the contrary. The edge cases are really all that count.

We shouldn't demand that our systems work in 100% of cases. Nine Nines -- or even less, in the case of autos -- is enough.

You can argue that autonomous flight doesn't yet have Nine Nines. I would probably agree. But "Miracle on the Hudson" was just that, and extremely rare situations should not be a standard-bearer for allowing autonomous flight. In the same way that suicidal/homicidal humans shouldn't be the standard-bearer for allowing human flight.