It is simple. Continuing your metaphor, I have a choice of getting exactly where I want on a camel in 3 days, or getting to a random location somewhere on the other side of the desert on a helicopter in few hours.
And being a reasonable person I, just like the author, choose the helicopter. That's it, that's the whole problem.
Helicopters are deterministic though :)
You did something smart and efficinently using the least amount of energy and time needed. +1 for consciousness being a mistake
Why is that the reasonable choice if it doesn't get you to your destination?
I too did a lot of AI coding but when I saw the spaghetti it made, I went back to regular coding, with ask mode not agent mode as a search engine.