Why did the Machine need the souls of the Numbers?

In the movie 9, Nine accidentally revives the Machine by inserting an alchemical talisman into a power socket. In doing so, Two's "soul" is sucked out. Throughout the rest of the movie, the Machine makes a concerted effort to capture the rest of the Numbers, eventually absorbing the souls out of several more of them before eventually being defeated.

I'm a little confused, however, because there's one scene which explains the history of the Numbers and the Machine:

In a pre-recorded message left for Nine, the Scientist explains that he is the creator of the Machine. The Machine, lacking any human compassion, was quickly corrupted and began the war against humans which wiped out all life on the planet. The Scientist, in a last ditch effort to save humanity, created the Numbers by using the talisman to insert bits of his own soul into them.

If this is the case, wouldn't it a good thing for the Machine to be absorbing the souls of the Numbers?

Eventually it would have a complete human soul, and thus would have a "conscience". It would probably be able to realize the error of its ways, and presumably would try to make things right.

Then, using the massive resources at its disposal, it could create more "living" creatures, in the form of empathetic machines. Or it could even start looking for organic life and try to raise it (because let's be honest, it's extremely unlikely it was able to destroy literally every single microbe on the planet's surface, atmosphere, oceans, and crust with a mere gas, poison or not).

Presumably "becoming good" is not high on the primary motivations of the corrupted Machine, and there are easier ways to kill the Numbers than sucking out their souls. So why did the Machine try so hard to absorb them all?