I routinely anthropomorphize PID loops when tuning them.
One of the best nuclear astrophysicists I know thinks about stars as entities that want to stay alive -- "I'm running out of hydrogen, what can I burn next?" That approach yields the right phenomenology almost all the time.
Well, yes and no. We say things like "the star wants to go nova" when we mean "stars at this stage in their development tend to go nova" - but the star doesn't want, any more than it dreams or fears to go nova. Anthropomorphizing might help us generalize about things made by people (who do want, dream and fear) though I don't think that's always the case, but I would say it isn't always useful for non-human (and especially non-living) systems.
One of the best nuclear astrophysicists I know thinks about stars as entities that want to stay alive -- "I'm running out of hydrogen, what can I burn next?" That approach yields the right phenomenology almost all the time.