In 1999, there seemed to be a certain platonic interest in the concept of virtual/manipulated reality: that year ‘Matrix‘, ‘eXistenZ‘ and ‘Level 13‘, and a few months before he had done the same ‘dark city‘, all of them united by plots that revolved around very similar premises.
Just one Of these four films he achieved the (re)cognition of the general public: ‘Matrix‘, the film of cyberpunk aesthetic and groundbreaking special effects starring Keanu Reeves and directed by the Wachowski sisters.
That first installment of The Matrix, originally conceived as a solo film, was soon rewarded with two sequels (‘Matrix Reloaded’ and ‘Matrix Revolutions’both in 2003) are certainly irregular, which remain very far from the originality of the first and which, to make matters worse, taint it with numerous plot twists (if not mere amendments, or even inconsistencies).
And both defects are perceived even more strongly with what would become the fourth film in the saga, the compilation of shorts ‘Animatrix’, an animated experiment with a manga aesthetic lacking internal cohesion or excessive plot consistency with the live-action trilogy.
NO, The Matrix is not a movie about AI
But the attention of this article focuses on the status of this saga as the gateway for an entire generation to the concept of ‘artificial intelligence’. And this is certainly ironic, because at its core ‘The Matrix’ is not about this technology (or any other).
First of all, let’s make a stop to bring up one of the multiple criteria for classifying science fiction works: the division between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sci-fi:
- Hard: Those works that give special relevance to the scientific-technical details of the narrative.
- Soft: More speculative works, in which the plausibility and consistency of technological descriptions lose weight compared to philosophical reflections.
It must be made clear that ‘Matrix’ clearly belongs to this latter current: rather than reflecting on the functioning of artificial intelligence (we see nothing about neural networks, deep learning or some sad ‘laws of robotics‘) what worries the Wachowskis are religious symbolism.
Yes, religious people, think about it: the first film has a villain called Cifra – Cypher in English, which rhymes with Lucifer – who betrays Trinity – the Trinity – and the messiah she loves… It’s not very hidden either..
At the same time, these religious symbolisms are at the service of a confusing? subtle? philosophical-political reflection on the relationship between choice and causality, and on the influence of said relationship with sociopolitical domination.
Finally, evil tongues will also add that, in a fourth and deeper layer of analysis, the reflection on domination is in turn subordinated to the brilliance of the protagonists in those dazzling action scenes with bullet time in full force.
How did machines create the Matrix?
The story of The Matrix starts from a very similar premise like Terminator: Once they acquire self-awareness, the machines rebel against their creator, declare war on us… and win. The difference is that, in the world of the Matrix, the war is not resolved in a single day, so the UN has the opportunity to launch an apparently brilliant attack: since the machines’ greatest source of energy was the Sun itself, humans decide to cover the sky and plunge the planet into darkness.
The problem is that, from that moment on, the machines stop seeking the extermination of humans and start collecting us like batteries: from then on, they will raise us in capsules to take advantage of our heat and electrical energy (you don’t have to go to the future to see something similar). But to keep us alive as long as possible, they can’t just keep us in a coma, they have to keep our minds active somehow.
And that’s where an AI enters which, years later, Neo would know under the name of The Architect. He creates the simulated reality known as the Matrix and connects all humans to it, who from now on will know nothing about the outside world, nor about the war against the machines. Being a machine the designer of this new reality, it is perfect, an inhumanly perfect utopia… and, as the Architect himself explains:
“A success only comparable to his monumental… failure. His ineluctable failure now seems to me to be a consequence of the imperfection inherent in all humans.”
Perfection causes human minds to rebel, and virtual reality itself falls apart. It’s time to install Matrix 2.0 and restart the server: the new system takes the opposite path and inserts humans into a dystopian reality of war and violence. The result is identical. The Architect, created primarily to design the perfect electrical grid, is unable to understand how its batteries work.
“Then I understood that the answer eluded me because it required a mind (…) not so limited by the parameters of perfection. The one who found the answer in a fortuitous way was another intuitive program that I had created, in principle, to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche.”
This program, later converted into ally of humanity under the name of The Oraclediscovers that the human mind can be dominated as long as it retains, even if unconsciously, a sliver of choice. The blue pill, which Neo will take years later (4 versions of the Matrix later, actually) will be the way to peek through that crack and leave the simulated reality.
But the interesting thing about these two programs is that they show the way in which programs relate to chaotic humans: calculating all their possible decisions. Or perhaps, if the technology of the ‘Matrix’ machines descends from AlphaZero’sjust have to calculate the most probable decisions based on previous experience.
Let’s remember the scene of the multiple screens with different reactions of Neo in the Architect’s office: they are not alternative worlds, but options that are offered to the human player and, when he chooses, the camera zooms in on said screen and the action continues from there.
The Oracle is so efficient at this task of calculating the most probable course of human actions that, in human eyes, he appears to predict the future. But she warns: “We cannot see beyond the elections that we do not understand”. And, despite the century (or millennium, depending on the calculation) that has passed since the end of the war between humans and machines, there is still something in the former capable of escaping the most complex algorithm.
Matrix, an operating system confusingly explained
Yes, we can equate the Matrix with an operating system: to minimize the probability that humans ‘choose wrong’, we resort to patches (the system changes that generate suspicious déja vu) and antivirus (the feared agents). But, as we discovered during the second movie, system reinstallations are an unavoidable fact in the long run. Like any Windows.
The aforementioned inconsistencies between the original film and its two sequels make it difficult to get the idea of what exactly The Matrix is. In the first, the viewer gets a more or less clear idea: The Matrix is a simulationin which both the minds of humans (some, with the ability to disconnect) and the software known as ‘agents’ are inserted.
However, in the following installments everything becomes much more complicated: The Matrix has several ‘levels’ or separate compartments (the Railway platform, the Architect’s office, the hallway of infinite doors used by Seraph) and there is an enormous multitude of programs of all kinds inserted in the Matrix, many of them outside of (or in open rebellion towards) the guidelines of the supposed central authority of ‘the machines’, which curiously, if it actually exists, is never mentioned. by his name.
Also The attitude of the programs towards humanity evolves throughout the saga.: If from the agents in the first installment it is only clear to us how much they hate the human ‘stench’ of the ‘zoo’ that is the Matrix, later we find programs that pursue desires as human as sexual, or that feel ‘grateful’ for having offspring.
Yes, small programs “without a specific purpose” born from the digital combination of two other pieces of code. Well, artificial paternal-filial love may sound like something Martian to us, but creating new programs from the reused code of others is something we already have (DeepCoder, from Microsoftis an example of this).
And human beings don’t learn.
In ‘Matrix: Reloaded’ we observe an interesting scene about the human-machine relationship between the liberated humans who live in the last human city, the underground Zion (again, religious symbology). Talking with Neo, one of the leaders of the human community states:
People are like that, no one cares how things work as long as they work. I like to come down here and remember that this city survives thanks to these machines. They have the power to give life and to take it. (…) If we wanted, we could turn off these machines. You have said it. That’s mastery, don’t you think? (…) But if we did, what would happen to our electricity, our heating, our air?
Humans have lost their world to machines, but as much as they may hate them, they are unable to survive without them. It is true that, at least, Zion’s technology does not appear to be intelligent, being fundamentally mechanical.
Thus, humans do not cross the line pointed out by Agent Smith in the first film: “As they began to use us to think, (their civilization) became our civilization. Which is, of course, the essence of all this.” Wait…or yes they do? Let’s remember the training programs for new members of the Resistance presented in the first film. What is the Woman in the Red Dress if not an AI?
And it would be debatable whether that “I know kung fu!” It was not the inspiration of another human who believes he can use the weapons of artificial intelligence to defeat it: Elon Musk and his NeuraLink. Definitely, in a century (or millennium), humans have not been able to understand machines either.
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