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The Sentient Spirit

Something that has started to bother me as I go on my fourth viewing of the animatrix and the third viewing of the trilogy. The machines, even the individual programs seem to not only have a mind of their own, but a desire to live and thrive. In the animatrix, they displayed a desire to not only live and thrive, but a desire to belong. This type of thing is generally attributed to have a spirit or a soul. Had the machine not only developed a mind of their own, but also a spirit/soul and in appearance, a personality? If this is so, then how would this come about, machines cant have a soul, can they? Did the Matrix then, in order to create the story line have to create the impossible, a human soul replicated to a machine? This debate tends to get extremely philosophical with my friends at work and I was hoping the the group, and especially the two Matrix guru's on the forum could lend their views to these questions.

Spirit Sentient The

Considering that the Machines were originally created by people who have will and spirit I do not see it as impossible. Artificial intelligence has long been a quest of perfection by Man mostly for selfish reasons in this case. It really goes back to the concept of slavery, Man wanted something that could serve him without complaint with him as master and yet perform just like a human, well they got just what they asked for in the end, a rebellious slave that inherited Man's selfishness and now it is payback time.

The Sentient Spirit RPG Plugged Trilogy Matrix

Could it be that the machines saw this 'sentient' behavior in humans, and learned how to understand it, and eventually develop it? Learned intelligence is what made the machines so human-like, and when the machines learned too much, they realized that self-preservation was all that mattered. Why did the machine snap and kill those people; the same people it was programmed to serve? It wanted to belong, to be treated fairly and justly, and, dare I say it, humanely. Why would a machine care about this? Because it learned such inherent behavior from us.

Spirit Sentient The

So then, was the behavior simply a learned and mimicked action, or was it a real personality? The beauty of humans is that our response is determined by the situation and the way we interpret the intentions and actions of those around us. This would be contained within our soul and spirit, its who we are. But if its a learned action or reaction, it cannot be considered to be part of a soul or spirit. In order to do this the machines would have to get past their logical programming to emotions which are indeed illogical most of the time. Many times emotions are not logical, such as the idea of self-sacrifice. I believe that resides in our spirit and soul, who we are. So could a robot sacrifice itself for someone or something else? This would be the ultimate judge of the sentient spirit, to be able to forfeit self for someone else.

Spirit Sentient The

Yes, the behavior would have to be learned and mimicked since machines have no soul. However, most of the behaviors you mentioned, Konq, aren't that illogical if you really think about them. Self sacrifice is not illogical, if there is a mission at hand that requires one to sacrifice themselves. Self preservation is also not illogical, because no one is going to build a machine that just destroys itself, unless its destruction serves a purpose. About the only behavior that I thought was most human, was the machine wanted to be treated equally. This 'sense of belonging' is innate to the human civilization, and was the one trait that showed the machines had transcended simple logic, and began to implement human illogic as well. This attempt to be equal with humans is what started the war in the first place, because humans could not bear to be at the same level as machines.