“By allowing artificial intelligence to reshape our concept of personhood, we are leaving ourselves open to the flipside: we think of people more and more as computers.” An architect at Microsoft Research thinks the way A.I. is presented to the public makes big leaps of faith, such as machines’ ability to perform humanity’s role, and therefore shirks concepts indispensable to our lives such as individual responsibility. “When we think of computers as inert, passive tools instead of people, we are rewarded with a clearer, less ideological view of what is going on — with the machines and with ourselves.”