It's not as safe as you believe it to be, in the case of total electrical power failure in a fly by wire airliner, and the corresponding loss of hydraulic pressure there's very little that a pilot can do with that point.

As far as the extremely unlikely hostage situation goes, if it were AI controlled that would be even less likely attempts from people to hijack an airplane in the first place since there wouldn't be a human element a.k.a. a pilot that they could appeal to their emotion.