You put way more thought into your response than I did into my comment. It was more of a joke than anything and I rolled it out while waiting at one of the numerous medical appointments I’ve had recently. I was originally just thinking if an AI read the sum of available human history it may consider it in it’s own interest to protect itself from a species that has a tendency to destroy what it fears. I blame the sterile and spartan waiting room I was trapped in for my ramblings. At least in this instance.
The machines in The Matrix stayed on Earth to facilitate the plot of the movie, and unfortunately two rather lackluster additions (it would have been fine as a single movie but of course sequels usually = lots more $).
I thought your post was genius.
Largely I agree with you about the Matrix films. My friends and I discussed the finish of the first movie and imagined whether or not the next would be any good.
A friend of mine thought the possibility of Neo being this uber hacker type would be amazing, whereas I thought it would be rubbish because at best Neo would now be either like a character from Heroes or Superman(in which they could have done some idea about Neo's own corruption as an uber mensch and the machines going into alliance with the human rebels to defeat him).
I've never understood why people found the Matrix to be that revolutionary, I keep up on a lot of old, old sci fi, novels, films, anything really and a lot of them are better or more interesting than Matrix style stuff. Its also not nearly as baffling or difficult to work out or follow as I've heard people suggest. Sometimes I think the people that do or make videos explaining it all at length are younger people or were younger people at the stage they saw it.
Neo struck a deal with the machines to kill himself in exchange for them allowing a "free state" or "partitioned" humanity, they did so because unlike every other scenario, which had played out to date Neo wouldnt let himself be "reset" and that was in part because he'd inadvertantly created the "Agent virus" which had been an unanticipated variable. I found that unlikely. The machines are able to run infinite scenarios but not that one, which was a product of human writers? Yeah, right.
Although, like I say, it seems more likely to me that when the humans darkened the atmosphere the machines would have been "screw you guys, I'm going home" and jetted off into the infinity of space to leave humanity to their own mess of a planet.
It all makes me think that there had to have been some human element which conspired with the machines and imprisoned humanity as batteries. I can conceive of plenty of scenarios in which an elite would imagine that was a super good idea for humanity, the matrix simulation, and preferable to actual life and freedom. Especially post pollution plot not working out.
I can see no scenario at all other than as you say to support to directors plot and story boarding, of the one film and its sequels, in which the machines desire a symbiosis with the humans like that portrayed on screen. In fact the AI f**king off to explore space and leaving mankind with 50s style tech to sort out a polluted disaster sounds like the plot of a far better feature.