I'm struck by the connection between this and the Air France Airbus 332 which crashed en route from South America to France about a decade ago.
It seems that the 737MAX (at least, the one last year -- we don't know about the latest one yet) crashed because a faulty sensor caused the computer to automatically point the nose down in order to avoid a perceived stall risk and the pilots weren't able (or didn't know how) to disable that.
In contrast, the 332 crashed because a faulty sensor misled the flight crew into pointing the nose up and getting into a stall.
In both cases, crashes resulted from reliance on a faulty sensor -- but in one case it was flight crew and in the other case it was software. Solving this isn't going to be as simple as saying "the flight software should defer to the pilot" or vice versa.
It seems that the 737MAX (at least, the one last year -- we don't know about the latest one yet) crashed because a faulty sensor caused the computer to automatically point the nose down in order to avoid a perceived stall risk and the pilots weren't able (or didn't know how) to disable that.
In contrast, the 332 crashed because a faulty sensor misled the flight crew into pointing the nose up and getting into a stall.
In both cases, crashes resulted from reliance on a faulty sensor -- but in one case it was flight crew and in the other case it was software. Solving this isn't going to be as simple as saying "the flight software should defer to the pilot" or vice versa.