How does The use of the word machine support the authors claim in this passage sugar changed the world

For an African, whether you were sent to the Caribbean or South America, you were now part of the sugar machine. And it did not much matter where your ship landed. You could be working the fertile fields of Brazil or the hills of Jamaica; the brutal cycle of making sugar was much the same.

The options you were given are:

Its negative connotation indicates that enslaved people had to work like robots instead of human beings.

Its negative denotation indicates that some people preferred handmade sugar over factory-produced sugar.

Its positive connotation indicates that plantations ran efficiently and produced huge amounts of sugar.

Its positive denotation indicates that it was easier for enslaved people to make sugar with machines.

Every word has two types of meaning:

Denotation - its literal meaning
Connotation - the emotional or cultural association a word carries

Depending on the emotion a word evokes, its connotation can be negative, neutral, or positive. The word machine here has a negative connotation because it indicates that enslaved people had to work like robots instead of human beings. People didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that enough sugar was being produced. If someone died from exhaustion or illness, they would be easily replaced, like a part of the machine. This is why the first option is the correct one.