The 105th Installment
Al as Depicted in "The Matrix"

by Sanggyu Shin,
Assistant Professor, Master Program of Information Systems Architecture

It's been a while now, but do you remember that science-fiction movie The Matrix? Some may feel differently, but I think it's a masterpiece that will live on in the annals of science-fiction movie history.

It takes place in 2199 in a world run by a computer equipped with an artificial intelligence, a much talked-about topic nowadays. In this world, newborn humans are immediately sealed into artificial wombs built by the machines and are used as energy sources to prolong the life of the AI. A program called the "matrix" is then downloaded into their brains. The program shows them a virtual reality set in 1999 and makes them believe that they are living there for their entire lives.

The movie begins with protagonist Thomas Anderson, who is living a normal life inside the matrix, being visited by a mysterious person.

Although the movie doesn't explain why the world of the future turns out like this, further details can be gleaned from the anime.

The anime explains how humanity, which has become an advanced civilization, develops an AI-equipped machine for self-serving purposes. The machine, which is able to think on its own, realizes that it is no different from a slave and attempts to murder its masters. Sensing the danger, the humans resolve to and begin destroying the robots. The robots, too, build up an arsenal, and the two sides ultimately engage in war. Gradually losing the war, the humans decide to use atmospheric contaminants to fight the machines by blocking their energy source, the sun. But the humans lose the war, and the machines, no longer able to use solar energy, begin using the warmth from human bodies as an energy source. For this they place humans into artificial wombs to prevent their extinction and make it so that they live in a virtual reality, which is the world in the movies.

As a recent trend, many in academia and industry are researching artificial intelligence, and the world of The Matrix shows that there are surprisingly many who regard the future of mankind with pessimism. The Terminator is another movie that takes a bleak view of the future.

Those in the artificial intelligence community are holding confrontational discussions about weak AI and strong AI.

Actually, mankind already has a history of rising up and destroying machines: it was done by blue-collar workers in the industrial revolution. This happened because workers were worried that mechanization would leave them with no work to do. But in actuality, the growth of industry saw a shift from workers performing simple labor to intellectual labor. This led to new jobs, and workers' fears were never realized. Now we stand at the dawn of Industry 4.0. Do workers now not feel the way they did during Industry 3.0? Yet this time, machines are becoming capable of replacing the intellectual labor done by white-collar workers, and I believe the ripple effect of that will be greater than ever before.

When AI is able to take over the intellectual labor that only humans can do now, there will be no work that only humans can do, forcing us to confront an even more serious problem. Quite the conundrum, right?

Going back to the movie, even the AI architects who run the matrix are unable to build a perfect, flawless virtual reality and are constantly correcting errors. (Just like the programmers of today... Ha!)

In the movie, the cause of the errors in the matrix are the "human soul." Do humans really have an ego? It is a question that has long been asked both in science and philosophy. There are many other movies about AI-equipped robots that struggle with the question of their own existence.

Although the AI in The Matrix is capable of thought, it doesn't appear to have an ego. To me it seemed like the movie defined "probabilistic inference" as "thinking," and explores the fundamental problem of whether or not the ego exists. The movie brings up many problems that we should address.

There are all kinds of errors even in the society in which we now live, and maybe spending time thinking about things while watching an old movie could benefit us. What kind of future awaits us in this rapidly computerizing society? What will we need to do to live in that world? Perhaps we can take some time to watch things that will encourage us to ponder the essence of those questions.