I bet the trainers that certify an astronaut is precise enough to get it done are a lot cheaper than the engineers required to certify a computer wouldn't karate chop the station.
The arm almost certainly has a control system that can resolve that. Since humans suck at higher order control, the arm almost certainly has a control system that takes the operator's desired output (which will be a series of joint angles), and converts into the required motor torques. In this process, the control system almost certainly also does sanity checks to prevent self-intersections, collision with the space station, overtorqeuing the motors, and etc.
Replacing the human with a computer program therefore likely doesn't literally involve verifying that it will not karate chop the station - lower level control will take care of that for you.
However, as anyone who has worked with robot manipulators before, actually getting good performance out of them in variable environments (ie, not a controlled factory assembly line) is quite a bit of work - work that probably isn't worth it.
considering the first flight where they were rewriting code while it sat outside the station; reconfigured the LIDAR on the fly; I would put it down being overly cautious, maybe a bit of fear? Let us be honest, with all the difficulty of getting that module into space docking isn't that big of a deal. If there were no people on board no one would care.
Plus I have to ask, if a thruster suddenly misfires or goes haywire who is going to be faster? In Apollo days I would put odds on the astronauts, today - I am betting on a computer. We will sooner trust a car to drive itself before we allow a freighter to dock with a space station.
Replacing the human with a computer program therefore likely doesn't literally involve verifying that it will not karate chop the station - lower level control will take care of that for you.
However, as anyone who has worked with robot manipulators before, actually getting good performance out of them in variable environments (ie, not a controlled factory assembly line) is quite a bit of work - work that probably isn't worth it.