For the sake of argument, let’s be real generous with the terms “unambiguous”, “sequence”, “goal”, and “recognizable” and say everything is an algorithm if you squint hard enough.

when you soften these words, what you're left with is a heuristic - a method that occasionally does what you expect but that's underspecified. it's a decision procedure where the steps aren't totally clear or that sometimes arrives at unexpected results because it fails to capture the underlying model of reality at play.