"In the Kowalski's post-apocalyptic nightmare, the machines kept humans around to produce electricity on a planet that was in the midst of a nuclear winter. Whilst that is a great storytelling device, in reality, the human body does not make a great power source. Simply because you have to put far more energy into our bodies, to keep them alive, than they could ever produce."
I really gotta admit, I think the Matrix had this wrong, and perhaps only because it's a movie, and they didn't think about it enough.
But if I was a machine intelligence entity, I would actually NOT use humans as an electrical source. I would use their brains as processors, to process my data.
Yes, the most insidious thing would be to not only give these life forms a fake reality, but use parts of their brain to run the simulation itself, as well as process my data, whatever that data might be.
Fair point, however I think we might come into some serious lag issues, thoughts process around the speed of sound, which is horrendously slow, especially across an entire network.
Ultimately humans would be fairly useless to a malevolent machine society; hence all our Orwellian paranoia regarding the singularity.
I think we'll be alright though, they are human machines after all! :-)
Cg
Perhaps they don't need speed, but instead, predictions about events, or other simulations that require a softer computer than one that's made of non-organic parts.
Interesting, a simulation that's unique because of the hardware running it sort of thing? Yeah, that could work, I think...
Cg
Yeah, we have to assume that the Matrix evolved out of code that humans wrote. This type of code right here before us, perhaps. Decentralized blockchain stuff, or EOS type code.
And like all robots in play today, there's almost always a human element, ensuring that everything is in order, because robots aren't perfect.
Robots might need programmed instructions, which although can be sharply clear, might lack that sense of drive, purpose, and fuzzy consciousness humans have, so if a screw was to fall down a grate, even though the robot might find it difficult to comprehend how to pick it up, they could employ a human brain to write new instructions for the machine, even the if the human isn't aware of this.
Just speculating. =3
Funny, I was having a conversation earlier with a friend of mine about the singularity, and malevolent vs benevolent computers.
My take on it is very similar to what you've just described. Ultimately, all machinery is human, simply because humans programmed it. In the same way if we met aliens from Alpha Centurai and they showed us their computers, we would say they were alien machines.
Cg