That's a fair criticism but it neglects two realities I'm familiar with. The first is that automated testing usually doesn't exist to the degree that you need

That's a fair criticism but it neglects two realities I'm familiar with. The first is that automated testing usually doesn't exist to the degree that you need it to be done. That's an engineering problem in and of itself, but manual QA still exists and always will. The second is more important which is feedback from the marketplace. If you release infrequently you are harming the ability of the business to adapt and increasing the risk of what features people care about. This is something I see every single release cycle - more frequent repositioning is more stable and that's only possible with customer feedback. And as far as I know it can't be captured in automated testing.