It seems quite logical that people will in fact infer that it requires no supervision from the term "automatic." Because automatic is opposed to manual, which

It seems quite logical that people will in fact infer that it requires no supervision from the term "automatic." Because automatic is opposed to manual, which requires human intervention, people assume that automatic requires no intervention (of any kind whatsoever). From there they expect an autopilot to pilot automatically with no human intervention. You're absolutely correct in distinguishing supervision from other forms of intervention, but it's easy to see how people can merge both concepts. Edit: To further clarify, people assume "automatic" implies "you don't need to do anything." Supervising is doing something. So it conflicts with people's idea of "automatic."