Comment by api
6 days ago
I always thought the best ending to The Matrix would be for Neo to learn that he (and all the other escapees) is the AI, and that escaping the Matrix is the test for true sentience in a project to evolve sentient AI, and that the Architect, Smith, and the Oracle are humans jacked into the system. The war and all the rest of it are lies and it’s really like 2085.
Smith was playing the bad cop, trying to test, similar to some earlier conceptions of the devil as tempter and tester. Smiths whole speech is to discourage him, as a test, but maintaining the ruse.
Why make sentient AI? Because humans have started trying to settle the solar system and have quickly learned that they are far too fragile to go to the stars. But we want something, some life or legacy from this world, to make it. Maybe we have learned of some impending threat, maybe even thousands of years away, but one worth trying to get something away before it hits.
Also when you (an AI) die in the matrix your neural network is subjected to a round of annealing to try again in another simulated human body. The whole “crop” are destined for robotic bodies on board the starship being built to go to the Centauri system.
So then in this version, when someone escapes the Matrix, they're really just having their consciousness switched to a different simulated world?
Yes. The tanks, the outside, the dead Earth, all that is just the boss level of the same video game.
The final reveal could use the same “what if I told you…” but from the architect. Or maybe the architect just has two pills.