> To be the agent of an event requires agency. We have it, principal component analysis doesn't.

Agency remains undefined, just like "sentience" from your other post. Unless you actually define it, how can you possibly know that we have it and principle component analysis doesn't?

Even if we take a connotative definition of agency, ie. that it is some quality or behaviour that humans exhibit, then it remains to be shown that code cannot possibly have agency in this exact sense.

Certainly not all code will have agency, just like all code does not have a "sorter" property exhibited by sorting algorithms. I also agree with you that current forms of AI don't have what we recognize as agency, but I don't think we're as far off as some think, and I definitely don't see how it's a category error to talk about AI in this fashion. Whatever qualities you think humans have that grants agency, it might not be nearly as complicated as you assume.