In an early work, Understanding Computers and Cognition, the computer scientists and AI pioneers Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores point out our tendency to ascribe rationality to computers. We do this when a physical system is “so complex, and yet so organized, that we find it convenient, explanatory, pragmatically necessary for prediction, to treat it as if it has beliefs and desires and was rational.” But neither computers nor humans are rational actors—and this is not a problem. They continue, “We treat other people not as merely ‘rational beings’ but as ‘responsible beings.’ An essential
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