Comment by Kim_Bruning

We could, but the way I read the dictionary, a goal doesn't require life, agency, or even autonomy by itself.

I think understanding goals or set points is a useful concept in control theory.

I don't think many technologies have had "motivations" before, though they have had "motivators", but that's something completely different :-P.

I'm not sure how you'd encode "improve this open source project" in earlier technologies.

I think it's reasonable to call that a type of motivation.

We call a robot arm an arm too, even if it's not made of meat.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/goal [2] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/goal