Lessons from The Matrix — Deep Learning
We can never see past the choices we don’t understand
The Matrix was the last movie I saw that actually managed to surprise me with its big reveal. I saw it opening weekend. The Web was much younger, and one actually had to look for spoilers instead of having to hide from them.
Even the movie’s own Web site kept its secret. I walked into the theater not knowing the answer to the question that the ad campaign kept asking, the same question plaguing Neo at the beginning of the story.
What is the Matrix?
As you undoubtedly know by now, the Matrix was a virtual reality simulation wired directly into the brains of millions or billions of captive humans in order to convince them that they lived and interacted in the ‘real’ world by feeding sensory information directly into their brains.
Before we get into this, let me get a few things out of the way:
- I don’t want to argue about inefficiencies in the machine’s energy generation scheme. It’s a movie.
- Did you ever consider that maybe the machines wanted to preserve the human race? There could be multiple explanations for this.
- I don’t think we’re living in a Matrix right now. If we are, let me know when you find the door. I want to see what’s outside. I also want to borrow their technology; I could clean up in the MMO market.
I think that covers the usual forum arguments. Moving on…
What did the humans think of this?
Most of them apparently bought the illusion. They might have had some nagging tug in their mind that the world wasn’t quite what it seemed, but let’s be honest: how many of you feel that way right now?
For those humans who escaped, trying to define the Matrix was a constant issue. It was… too big. Yet they spent most of their time studying it, when they weren’t fighting for their lives or visualizing leather outfits to wear.
But the humans, even the smart ones, aren’t why we’re here. They were stumbling through a war, guided by prophecy, surviving by luck and design.
And it wasn’t their design.
Machine Learning, Advanced
I do enjoy these movies for the sci-fi stories they tell. But I also enjoy three characters in particular, none human. They are the only ones (to my mind) that really put forth effort to learn about the world to a serious degree. And, whether they like it or not, each learns from the others along the way.
Most people collaborate only with friends. At times, adversaries can be useful.
The Architect
Yes, I like the Architect. Get over it or skip ahead. I think I’d even be interested in conversing with him on occasion, although I wouldn’t be inviting him to any parties. I didn’t even mind his lecture, and I enjoyed his reactions to Neo.
Like him or not, the Architect spends his existence and considerable intellectual resources studying the human race: its history, its collective mentality, and its reaction to different circumstances and situations.
While limited by an adherence to rationality, the Architect’s arrogance is surpassed only by his need to understand humanity at every level. The history of the race is equally important as the most mundane detail of each individual in his virtual playground. The architect is frustrated by his inability to identify or derive an algorithm to make sense of all the data he collects.
His acknowledgement and understanding of hope was very interesting to me.
As a side note, the myriad screens here do not depict alternate realities. They represent possibilities, which collapse into one reality when Neo decides on a course of action.
That’s why the camera zooms into the appropriate screen each time Neo reacts rather than simply resetting the combined display.
As Neo immediately surmised, the issue is choice.
The architect’s purpose, as stated by the Oracle in Matrix Revolutions, is to balance the equation.
The Oracle
…an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche…
If you’ve watched these movies and don’t like the Oracle, there is something genuinely wrong with you. Her combination of foresight, intuition, and genuine love of life make up a personality that I would also quite like to meet.
The Oracle accepts the Matrix for what it is, while acknowledging exactly what it could become. As a program herself, she sees the life all around her, human and machine. She also believes that all of it needs to be protected.
Her understanding and her conversations with Neo start him on the path to understanding that the programs have a life worth saving, just like he does. That’s no small feat when you consider everything in Neo’s path to this point has been focused on destroying the machines and their constructs.
Yes, she can see through time. So can Neo at this point, as well as a few others.
While the Architect focuses on the structure and mathematics of the Matrix and the humans around it, the Oracle focuses on the well-being of both. She was arguably the first program to see humanity as more than dangerous tools.
The Oracle’s purpose, as she stated, is to unbalance the equation.
Agent Smith
You didn’t think I could get through this article without mentioning Smith, did you? He’s the wild card. The proverbial fly in the ointment. The joker data.
When we encounter Smith in the first movie, he already stands out from the other agents.
The other agents follow orders like… well, like automatons. They display no thought process. They ask no questions.
Agent Smith does follow orders at this point, but he also shows interest and creativity.
As Smith evolves through the series, he becomes more like what we might consider ‘human’ because he thinks for himself. He acts on the available information, not just the programming fed to him. He rejects the demands and expectations of both the machines that created him and the humans that encounter him.
True, some of his ‘learning’ is accomplished through programmatic osmosis (absorbing others), and he is still somewhat defined by his programming. Personally, however, I’d love to be able to learn that quickly (though I’d rather not kill or copy everyone to do it), and the discussing of his programming, when viewed in human terms, would be defined as “nature vs nurture”.
Smith’s purpose is his own. Or is it just another part of the overall design?
Collaborative Learning
Obviously, this is not a textbook example of ‘deep learning’, but let me add one critical component. None of this happens in a vacuum.
Or maybe it does. It is the Matrix, after all. Maybe they were just on level two rather than escaping to the ‘real’ world. More than one group of fans has promoted that theory over the years.
You can’t fool me, of course. It’s turtles, all the way down. But moving on…
As antagonistic as these three characters are, each of them builds their own learning on the lessons of the others. And each of the three pushes deeper into the subject matter (choice, cause / effect) based on knowledge gained from others.
Even the Architect admits that each iteration of the Matrix and requisite emergence of the integral anomaly inherent to its programming is another chance for him to learn from the experience and expand his understanding.
I could have also written a Matrix article about how the humans kept thinking they understood everything, just to learn that they’d barely scratched the proverbial surface of a whole new level. But I’ve always found it more interesting to consider that the machines were in the same place, so to speak.
I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts. Ever considered it from this perspective? Think I’m way off base? Are you even still paying attention…
Or are you remembering the girl in the red dress?
