The American intelligence apparatuses had been using this line of reasoning to legalize their illegal operations from the start: computers collecting data on citizens are not committing 'surveillance'. If a human needs to assess that data then they apply for a rubber stamp from the state to allow surveillance of a human, but for the computer to collect and asses? There was never a need to seek authorization: it's not surveillance. Computers collecting data and autonomously acting on that data--even to kill--can never be illegal. Welcome to the United State of Ammerikkka.
That's to say: it never mattered. The verbal affluent to legitimize what they're doing is just that. To people ignorant of computers it may have sounded reasonable back then, given it was dressed up enough, but in the day of computer-controlled economies and warfare I don't think it can stand anymore even to a moron.
It can't change though as changing would necessitate all the current political and economic structures to change: to voluntary put in excruciating effort to give up power. Not only are you asking those in power to debase themselves, but to also debase all those around them. It cannot happen.
What can happen and what should happen is that you should act. You are in control of you: liberate your computers. Not only is this something that is possible, but you are also empowering yourself. When you do this you inversely disempower the polities and economic controls that are superstructures built on this foundation of computer-surveillance and -manipulation.
