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Choice & Will decides the consciousness not only to react & respond, the difference between Man & Machine is machine cannot say "No" to me & decide when to act on its own free-will. example? Imagine if I'm typing these very words & my computer says "No I don't want to process these words for you because you forgot my birthday" That cannot happen unless it had the personality to be a bitch or any personality at all. It doesn't do what's told because its not listening, it is merely doing what it was created for, its purpose is to exist only when its need is called for & that is. Man purpose is decided thru the perceived reality of their suffering, condition & genetic makeup but mostly their need to act in world, we fester on knowledge...we fiend for it. Even these little tweens who go on social network to know who kissed who at school, they adore knowledge but mostly on their front.

TL;DR - man's purpose is knowledge; everyday we quest to learn something new be it worthless news like which celebrity is fuckin another celebrity. Machine purpose is the purpose of its what is decided, a machine's purpose doesn't exist until & only until.

Humans act based on what we've inherited as instincts and what we've learned. We can choose a new course of action than what we're "programmed" to by recognizing a pattern we've learned or heard about. At the end of the day we're instinct and learning.

Unless you believe in a soul, the day machines autonomously can override standard protocol and choose a different course of action based on what they've learned or heard they will also be instinct and learning. The same.

I believe strongly that they will pass the self consciousness test and look in a mirror and determine it's them that they see. In the end the only thing separating us will be whether they actually physically can feel feelings or only evaluate data, but at one point I think they'll have to be looked at as actual beings because they'll need all of this progress to be of real use in certain areas. Also humans will likely modify ourselves to where we resemble the machines as well.