According to Lovelace, “The Analytical Engine has no pretensions to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.”⁴ Here, the analytical Engine referred to is a universal digital computer, which can be made to perform many task but cannot originate anything on its own. That is to say, as a machine it fails in the matter of creativity. It is for this reason we can say that a machine can ‘never do anything really new.’ In comparison to the machine, we can argue, the human mind is not a machine at all, since it originates many new things. The human system as a whole is a creative system which cannot be mimicked by any machine.

Again, we may argue that human beings have some psychological qualities such as intelligence, consciousness or originality, etc. which are said to be necessarily lacking in machine. That is why, a machine is normally treated as an artefact and a mere mechanical contrivance manufactured for a definite purpose.

However, when it is said that it is impossible for a machine to be conscious, it is not always clear to what extent this is intended to be a logical objection, and to what extent empirical. Empirically, machines are not conscious, but this cannot be proved logically. Robots are well known for duplicating human behaviour. For a robot, ex-hypothesis, is capable of behaving like a human being. We have no doubt that a human being is conscious, when he or she is doing work. Though a machine might do the same work, we are not inclined call the latter conscious. Thus it is taken for granted that humans are conscious, whereas of machines we enquire whether they are capable of consciousness or not. We know that the question of consciousness is appropriate in the context of human beings, but not so in the case of machines. A machine is essentially distinct from a man so far as consciousness is concerned. The machine-intelligence and machine-behaviour are not indicative of consciousness at all.