Biological machines

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This is intended to be another free will topic but with a twist. I would like to leave the free part out of it, because I think it only confuses the issue, and address the question of is there any such thing as human will at all.

Many years ago, back when I was programming, my employer sent the computer operator to some programming classes (which I thought was a waist of money) because they wanted to give him a chance to improve himself. Soon after he started asking me almost philosophical type questions like “how does the computer know if a>5?”. I would respond with brief technical answers and he informed me that that's not what he was looking for when he said “I'm trying to get inside the computers head”. I managed to hold on to my patience and explained to him once again that “the computer doesn't have a head, it doesn't have a heart, it doesn't have any feelings, it doesn't have any emotions, it doesn't have any desires. IT'S A MACHINE. Why do you find that so difficult to understand?”

I tell that story in the hope that it will illustrate, in a reverse sort of way, how it appears to me that some people seem to see themselves as biological machines with no control over their input, no control over their processing, no control over their output, and in most cases, no designer or programmer.

Do I have that right?

Some cars today know where they are going and the likelihood is that more will do so.