As someone who uses advanced autopilots very regularly, I can inform you that there is no intelligence. Even the best APs use only very basic feedback loops, wh

As someone who uses advanced autopilots very regularly, I can inform you that there is no intelligence. Even the best APs use only very basic feedback loops, which are tuned by the aircraft designers and fixed. Their behaviour is not modified by any smart overarching control. A "good" three axis autopilot consists of 3 quite independent systems. One controls pitch/altitude using a feedback loop very similar to an old-style car cruise control (no traffic sensing here :). A second system controls heading, similarly simplistic. And a third controls yaw, even simpler. There might be an auto-throttle, almost identical in function to conventional cruise control. There might be some useful variations (eg VS and FLC modes) - all very useful but there are NO SMARTS HERE. Modern systems have edge-case handling (triggered by too-slow, excess load, or anything going outside the normal operational envelope). The AP handles such cases by going "beep" and turning itself off - just handing over to the pilot!