I think because it’s language.

There’s a famous quote from Charles Babbage when he presented his difference engine (gear based calculator) and someone asking “if you put in the wrong figures, will the correct ones be output” and Babbage not understanding how someone can so thoroughly misunderstand that the machine is, just a machine.

People are people, the main thing that’s changed since the Cuneiform copper customer complaint is our materials science and networking ability. Most of things people interact with every day, most people just assume work like it appears to on the surface.

And nothing other than a person can do math problems or talk back to you. So people assume that means intelligence.