The problem with auto WB is that the camera is looking for a balanced colour approximating to its internal standard for white. If the picture is dominated by a colour, the auto WB setting will interpret this as an unwanted colour cast and try to remove it. A green colour cast is quite common under fluorescent lighting. Cloudy and shade settings will tend to make the resultant photo redder than it would have otherwise been to compensate for the loss of red tones in these situations. Selecting one of these is useful for enhancing sunsets and sunrises. Our brains have built in auto WB, so we often don’t notice the colour casts and paper will appear white to us under fluorescent light. This also m Ames us tend to remember sunsets as more vivid than the camera captures.
Auto settings can help at the beginning, but they often reduce the quality of the photo, as the camera just follows pre-programmed rules and doesn’t know what you are trying to achieve.