I doubt the term was coined as anything more than a marketing tactic to exalt the processing capabilities of the product. Still, you make me wonder what unforeseen consequences the anthropomorphising of new technologies could have on a social and political level. Perhaps greater trust on an automated surveillance systems, or better acceptance of the substitution of low-skilled workers by machines.
But personally I find it highly unlikely that this is a conscious effort with sinister motives, unless you consider "make more people buy more stuff" sinister. If there are any secondary effects they are just that, secondary.
As it has been pointed some times now in this board, people with interests like ours can be so eager to notice hidden motives, connections and effects that we end up falling into the conspiracy theorist stereotype. This is not as bad as it might seem, because more people who ever discovered something started with little more than speculation and wild ideas, but part of the discovery process is determining the probability of a theory being true. Sometimes the rabbit hole it just a couple of feet deep.