A genuine artificial intelligence, duplicating, not merely simulating, consciousness would, of course, be an artifact but might transcend the usual meaning of "machine." A mechanism merely does what it is designed to do whereas conscious intelligence is innovative and creative - partly ignorant but also partly learning.
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True, but algorithms themselves contain biases and assumptions that are not necessarily accurate; and the only conscious beings we know about (ourselves) are intensely resistant to information that contradicts their basic assumptions, the ones that constitute their identity. "Confirmation bias" and "motivated reasoning".
Our rational facilities didn't evolve to deal with the physical world, they evolved to deal with the -social- world, where winning the approval or acceptance of other members of the immediate social reference group is far, far more important than objective analysis.
Much of our reasoning capacity is devoted to "psychological modeling" -- making models which enable us to estimate how other people are going to act under particular circumstances.
And, of course, we also figure out how to present in such a way as to manipulate other people's models of our minds... it was an evolutionary arms race.
If you address a public meeting and people start to applaud what you say, it becomes very difficult to go on to say anything that you think will not be well received.
I knew a guy who got a cheer just for being disabled - then went on to state a minority political view that got him accused of dishonesty etc. He really did not care what people thought of him but did want to communicate his point of view.
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