It's going to take a while, for what they have described is a process to keep extremely preterm foetus alive, rather than an artificial environment to develop an entire organism from a fertilised egg - we actually know lot about IV fertilisation and keeping it alive through the first few development stages, but there are still significant gaps to cover until you have a somewhat developed foetus that has a chance of survival outside the womb.
In parallel example, we have not managed to find an artificial replacement for egg shells which is required for avian embryos to develop. Some techniques do exist, but none of the them were able to ensure survival past the first 2 weeks. Considering that humans have been breeding chicken for centuries, there is still plenty we don't know about our favourite bird, let alone fellow humans.
Not really, similar techniques were developed as early as.the 70s and there are sufficient doubt that the student project in the news did not go as well as they claimed, nor was there any report of reproducibility in a controlled laboratory setting.
Jurassic Park, at least in book form, describes in the first few chapter or three a revolutionary plastic which can replace an egg shell and produce viable chicks. I believe that this was based on actual contemporary science, circa 1990.
What's really frightening is not controlling human population, but vastly expanding it. Countries could grow citizens in factories. I've always thought Malthus would come back roaring, but this could go uncomfortably far.
No need to let them run free. Those humans could work remotely, from a small pod of amniotic fluid, mounted to the side of a huge tower. They could live their lives in MMOs, which would seem absolutely realistic, if that was the only thing they ever experienced. I don't think it is realistic to use them as an energy source though, heat would be a waste product in an environment like that.
Rewatching the films recently, the only explanation I've thought of for the machine's barmy plan is that they must be bound by the three laws or feel some kind of deep obligation to us, even after we made the entire world uninhabitable. Why else would they spend so much time growing us, feeding us, simulating for us, allowing the One(s) to save humanity repeatedly, and why else would they initially try to simulate paradise for us?
That explains why the humans aren't just ems (which is what people are more commonly confused about.) But I wasn't asking that; I was asking, why do they need the rest of the human, other than their brain? It costs far more to feed than just the brain would.
The method of which they produce the fetuses is never explained in the franchise, and considering they'd want to maintain genetic diversity it's probable that they simply harvest gametes from mature humans in the power plant and incubate an embryo.
There's also the whole "cycle" thing that's apparantley gone on for 6 iterations, allowing humans who reject the matrix to leave and periodically cull them was a solution to widespread rejection of the system that would have affected entire crops of humans. It's hard to do that if they don't have physical bodies to escape the system in the real world.
When Neo disconnected, the machines just dumped him for recycling. That is consistent with the machines eliminating humans who develop connection problems (mental disconnect with the Matrix), but it still doesn't account for the humans' bodies being grown and maintained in a nearly functional state.
What really bugged me about their scheme, was the suggestion that a human might make a decent power source. Perhaps that was all misdirection, and the humans are actually the computing substrate of the entire system? Maybe the machines were never able to compute at the power efficiency of a human brain? Maybe they suck at nanotech altogether, and can't even design a decent microchip without human assistance? All their stuff is big and bulky.
(5 minutes later) Lol, I can't believe I guessed it. Thanks to deegles for the background info.
My take is that they never managed to find a way to grow humans outside the 'ordinary' way. So they simply didn't have the technology to grow and sustain a working brains without also growing a whole human.
They can't just grow the human to adulthood, and then take the brain out and throw the body away? The point isn't to avoid growing a body; it's to avoid feeding a body that is laying there doing nothing, when the brain would have a much lower energy+nutrient cost.
I wonder if these imaginary super-AI couldn't come up with a solution, does that make this problem of growing just the brain a NP-HARD problem in this imaginary world?
