At the forefront of Artificial Intelligence

Is 'The Matrix' Possible?

'The Matrix' is a movie not only known for its phenomenal graphics, but also for its intriguing plot and ideas. The ideas behind 'The Matrix' are not original - in fact, the idea that we might all simply live in a vat of liquid dates back to Descartes. In 'The Matrix', Descartes' evil demon is replaced by a society of computers, running an incredibly powerful virtual reality program - The Matrix. All humans are stored in a container, and their brain is fed artificial sensory information all their life. The world seems so real, and life so ordinary that nobody suspects it is false. How plausible is this, and what implications could it hold?

Philosophical Potential

Disregarding the technical aspect of the idea, the actual implications of it are rather scary. There are a few parallels will solipsism ("everything is a dream") - everything that we ever 'lived' was merely a fabrication created by ourselves, evil scientists, demons or an omnipotent computer!

One of the biggest questions is, if indeed we were living in an artificial reality, would we want to know? For example, Keanu Reeves undergoes a degree of shock when he returns to the 'real' life and has a hard time grasping that everything he has ever done was all fabricated by a computer. There is the classic analogy of men in a cave, chained to the wall - everyday they watch their shadows cast on the wall by a huge fire behind them. This happens all their life, until one day they're dragged out into the open - the real world. Light, trees, fresh air, sun and sky - and what do the men do? Run back into the cave! Coming to terms with your life being a facade would be huge, and perhaps too much for too many to tolerate.

Another question that plagues people considering our "brain-in-a-vat" scenario, is how would one ascertain that they were in a vat? This depends on how we look at the problem. Is the brain merely fed sensory information, and the program creates new information according to the brain's feedback, or is the entire brain and all its responses also under the control of our omnipotent computer? If the latter was the case, we would have the idea that everything was conducted through our own free will, yet everything would be pre-planned. I think under this scenario, it would be close to impossible to ever determine you were not in 'reality' if the computer program was created in such a way to prevent such thoughts.

In a scenario like 'The Matrix' the computer program had small flaws: the phenomena of deja-vu indicated a large change in the Matrix, etc. The intriguing thing is, is that life does have those small glitches - deja-vu, supernatural phenomena, 'X-Files'-esque occurences that cannot be explained. Therefore without prior knowledge, ascertaining you were a captive in an artificial reality would take some serious guess-work!

The Mind-Body Problem

Another issue that 'The Matrix' brings up is the mind-body problem, but in a slightly different context. If you are currently within the Matrix and you are killed (shot, stabbed, whatever) - your brain believes so firmly that you are dead that you will actually die. This seems to be quite plausible - if your brain has every intention to believe that the body was dead, would it shut down the body? There is preliminary evidence that the brain can do such things (cancer patients that want to die tend to die a lot quicker), but as of yet there is very little hard scientific evidence.

Another example of something similar is "The Lawnmower Man" where a man repeatedly sent through virtual reality worlds gains super-intelligence, even psychic and telekinetic abilities. This is explained in the movie by the VR unlocking specific areas of the brain that natural stimulation does not reach. Is it possible that the drugs of the future are computer programs?

Technical Reality

All of the philosophical potential aside, how realistic is such a scenario? Let us look at a very simple analogy - the computer game. Now, what limits modern day computer games? Mainly the lack of control over a character, we are limited to what we can do. We can fly an F-14, shoot Strogg, beat Schumacher in F1 racing, solve murders and cast magic spells but all in a limited context. We cannot fly an F-14, but land it and get out of the aircraft and solve a murder on the carrier! Computer games suffer the classic AI problem of domain restrictions.

The argument against this goes that as our technology improves so will our ability to model the world. For example, many games are now integrating multiple genres, like RPGs and first-person shooters. My main argument against this though, is that the computer (as it currently stands) is a finite-state machine, and finite-state machine cannot perfectly represent an infinite universe. A computer of the future will be able to model the human brain, multiple brains, perhaps several hundred or thousand - but never a perfect simulation of the world they reside in.

Indeed, our brains cannot create such a strong illusion of an alternative reality that we fully believe it - dreams are as close as we get, but dreams are full of deep meaning, abrupt changes (that, interestingly, never disturb us in our sleep) and reflect upon our life and mental state. We cannot interact with dreams, I have never had a dream where I could smell, touch, rotate and interact with the objects freely - dreams run like motion pictures. I think this is quite a strong argument against ever having a computer model the world perfectly.

That's a nice though, since it leaves 'The Matrix' firmly in the fiction category...

Submitted: 06/04/2001

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