Is autosurvey ever *not* wasteful?

I was hoping that by this version the devs would have done something about auto survey ships gleefully running into heavily guarded anomalies. Is auto survey meant to be a late-game option even though you can gain the tech pretty early? They only way I can see an 'acceptable losses' ratio for survey ships is when you've got a large population and several shipyards. Otherwise, replacing survey ships eats too large a portion of the population and takes up yard time that should be available for new ships or projects.