As someone who hates the auto-recommendation system on YouTube and turns it off, I also appreciate this is sometimes the safest/easiest way to watch only the videos I actually intend to watch.

This seems intentionally YouTube's UX design fault, they too heavily try to push you to "auto-play". YouTube has a "Watchlist" feature where you can build a playlist. When it works it is exactly what I want, but it feels like every so many months it mysteriously breaks for a while or they hide the button for it behind some new hidden gesture or menu they expect you psychic out of their UI. (If you've never heard of "Watchlist", no wonder. It seems intentionally hard to discover.) Lately I've been complaining that YouTube adds random "auto-play" videos even to a manually curated "Watchlist" if you don't pay enough attention or watch past the end of the list (even with auto-play and recommendations entirely off).