Exactly, they're not special in any way they tell us they are. Even when they say we're not special as a species, they still say at least they and/or their living idols are better since they at least offer a new light on politically-incorrect info! They're actually not deeply dissident at all.
If we're "just machines", then we don't have psychologies, and we only just react to stimuli as machines do. But we don't. And strictly-speaking, machines are artificial, while workers aren't. We can draw analogies, but most elitists don't care about the limits of those when talking about us.
Why would it matter for them? They're mostly just assholes who deal with us distantly through paperwork and computers. They care more about their access to manufactured fantastical crap than us having anything good. They can get a computer to do enough of what they want - we're just punching bags.
The difference of a human machine from a computer is that it does have a "psychology" to regulate it. That's how the machine makes executive decisions. The mind isn't a carrier or user interface for some computer program "making them do it".
A computer isn't special because it's "artificial". We could by some argument declare that every human alive is artificial. We were created by a mechanical process (sex) in a factory by feeding on material. We usually engage in sex deliberate with the expectation of creating a child.
What makes the computer special is that we specifically designed such a machine not to "think". If a computer "thinks" like we do, it would not carry out a rote algorithmic task faithfully and without error (if we designed the computer to never fault which we mostly accomplished).
Everything done with computer science, and this would apply to any computer so analog computers are not exceptional, is about replacing "thought" with some mechanical action that operates on some symbolic representation. The computer is a tool for that purpose, not a mind or intelligence itself.
In ordinary language, if we call something a mind, we're talking about a psychological faculty. Computer science helps with resolving patterns in how we use our faculties to manipulate things we can symbolically represent, though not exactly HOW we do any of that, or what "thinking" "REALLY" means.
You're right that in the sense I used "artificial", humans are also artificial: manmade. But perhaps more importantly, they're not yet man-designed, at least as much as machines. Much of today's ideology involves ignoring that gap when talking about the poor, because again, why would elitists care?
If we aren't already "machines" which they design and give purposes to, they'll try to make sure we are. It's one reason why Eugenics appealed to them so much: "we can self-direct evolution!"