John
I don't think Aim assist was for automation. I look at it as a helpful clip navigation/placement tool.
The documentation says: "Aim Assist is a helpful guide when editing in the Clips pane and Piano Roll, making it easy to align the mouse pointer with events on different tracks or markers in the time ruler."
I guess by "editing" they could mean both clips and automation. There is certainly no reason why automation editing would require any less degree of accuracy. But by "clips pane" they definitely mean the clips pane, which does not mean the bus pane. Still, they must have made a conscious decision to disable Aim Assist while in the bus pane, and this seems ludicrous considering that there are automation lanes on buses.