Of course they have to be monitoring the flight but they can be generally assured that the autopilot won't decide to just fly into a mountain with only fractions of a second for the pilots to intervene.
Example: Traffic Resolution advisories require a 5 second reaction time and 2.5 seconds for any follow-on reactions. This reaction time includes the time to disengage autopilot and also put the aircraft into a climb-or-dive. Studies show that a situationally aware pilot takes at least 2 seconds to start the reaction, and another second to achieve the proper climb/descent. There are other times on e.g. approach, or ground collision warnings with even narrower margins for disengaging autopilot.
Pilots generally know when they need to be hyper-aware with autopilot and so do competent Tesla drivers. If there are issues with the name "autopilot" for Tesla, the same argument needs to be made for aircraft manufacturers.
If a drivers license required as much training as a pilots license then you might have a point.
An IMO important difference with pilots is that pilots are professionals that get trained and periodically retrained on how specific planes and their autopilots work.
Tesla drivers, on the other hand, hear Tesla’s at times optimistic marketing, and may just learn how to switch autopilot on and off without understanding when to use it and when not to use it.
Pilots require extensive training (an re-training). The must meet certain criteria to even fly certain types of plains. And they have to go through additional training if they have to switch planes (going from Airbus to Boeing for example).
So, if we're making "teh same argument" for Tesla, then Tesla needs all that to call its system an autopilot.
When the Autopilot swerves into a concrete wall for no reason, you will have 0.5 seconds left to live. Rwacting in the last 0.1 secons bwf9re collision will not save you - you must react in like 200ms.
It is physically impossible to react in time to some autopilot mistakes, stop defending this idiocy.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-drivers-autopilot-swerve...
In the example video the car starts turning at 40 seconds and passes the barrier at 47 seconds.
And most airlines ended up cancelling pending orders for the 737 Max and switched to a different brand that didn't play nearly as fast and loose with safety.