DislikedI would say the majority of automated trading systems fall into the category of non-responsive to changes but not all of them. Actually sometimes an automated system can be even more flexible than a trader. Anyway, I agree that many of the automated traders cannot replace the actual trader.Ignored
Imagine a system that has two modes: trend and countertrend. Your automated system's goal is to identify the dominant mode in the market at the time and to apply the correct ruleset. However, identifying the dominant mode often comes late - after negative equity drawdown has accumulated from applying the wrong stragegy during the time before the automated system recognized the shift. Humans are better at recognizing these shifts in a more timely manner IMO, and these shifts happen a little differently each time, making them hard to describe with static rules.
The other thing about automated trading systems (the ones with a positive edge) is that they do really counterintuitive stuff when you watch them trade live and compare what they do vs. your perceptions of what the market is doing. Often times they buy when the gut says sell and vice versa. This can be good because often the gut is not correct and doing the opposite of the obvious is often the right thing to do. However, sometimes they do really stupid things too that are obviously out of character with the market. But on balance, if your automated trading system has an edge, there is a lot of value in letting it place all these "smart" and "dumb" trades because the edge should eventually shine through pulling the equity up after a certain number of trades have been placed and closed.