In Lewis Caroll’s book, Alice asks the Cheshire Cat for directions and gets a philosophical exchange that is more than the directions she was looking for:
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. “–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
While the Alice in Wonderland books were written a very long time ago, the same principle of guiding purpose applies in the countless examples of modern autonomous robots that surround us. A robot cannot decide where to go unless its programming tells it what is most important. It will have a certain set of possible actions defined, and it will be told to use them in order to maximize some outcome, usually subject to certain constraints. For example, an autonomous car might be told to go from point A to point B in the minimal time while obeying traffic laws and not colliding with any other objects or people. If the robot did not have its purpose, potential actions, and constraints defined, it would not be able to navigate in any but random moves, causing random outcomes instead of arriving at the intended destination.
Most people live life full of situations they don’t particularly want that they obtained through walking long enough in directions they didn’t particularly think through. Most people never arrive at their intended destination, and many encounter infractions and collisions along the way that they would have rather avoided. The reason is simple: humans don’t tend to approach life intentionally.