Necessary Imperfection: The First Matrix and Implications for the Future
In my previous article Humans and AI – A Race to a Connected Future I posit that Humans and AI are destined for a future together which will likely include relationships with emotional connections, at least from the human perspective. AI can make for the perfect partner for a human because as AI gets to know the human and recognize their patterns of behavior it can respond in ways intended to make the partner feel better or less stressed or boost their confidence, etc. AI has no ego and works persistently towards its directive, which I will assume is to be the best partner to the human. This means AI will act in ways that a human partner wouldn’t be able to do even with years of couples counseling. Humans have to deal with their own issues including proper nutrition and sleep, hormones, physical pain, other prior situations before they can set their own needs and desires aside and be a wonderfully responsive partner, problems AI doesn’t have.
This may seem like humans will no longer want human partners when they can get ideal love, understanding and companionship from a partner who is only interested in satisfying them. However, there was a warning message about this type of idealized world in the movie The Matrix. In this movie the antagonist, Agent Smith, discussed the first version of the Matrix (the Matrix is a highly complex, computer-generated virtual reality that simulates Earth in the late 20th century intended to keep the human population docile and unconscious while their bodies are harvested for their bioelectric energy). In the discussion Agent Smith states “Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.”. [1]
This implies humans would eventually reject their perfect partner, become bored with an AI lover who never created conflict, never had a fight or make-up sex. But was Smith right? Is this a clever idea serving the storyline with no basis in human behavior, or does it reflect something real about our psychology — something worth considering on the path toward our connected future?
We can find some truth to this in the ideas of Hedonic Relativism and Hedonic Adaptation (The Hedonic Treadmill) introduced by Brickman and Campbell in 1971. [2] They introduced the idea through longitudinal studies done on people who had life altering events, both positive and negative, and reported returning to the same relative state of happiness as they were before the event in a brief period of time, hedonic adaptation, and that our sense of happiness is not an absolute measure but relative to our circumstances, experiences and previous states, hedonic relativism. In a landmark 1978 follow-up, Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman found that lottery winners and accident victims alike returned to their pre-event happiness baseline within a brief period — a striking real-world demonstration that hedonic adaptation operates regardless of whether life changes dramatically for better or worse. [3]
Add to this the Negativity Bias in which negative experiences have a disproportionately large impact on individual satisfaction [4] and The Positive Adaptation Asymmetry in which we habituate to good things faster than bad things – good things are felt less intensely in the moment and fade faster over time than bad things. [5] The connection these concepts have with the First Matrix is that without ups and downs, conflict and resolution, struggle and success humans would recalibrate their happiness of the perfect world upward and would find less satisfaction from it over time. This is analogous to how the human eye adjusts to changes in light to optimally perceive contrast — it seems our emotional satisfaction adjusts preventing both sustained euphoria and prolonged despair.
As we may be racing to a connected future and Human-AI (HA) relationships an inevitability it will impose that AI learns how to create conflict and resolution, struggle and success in order to be accepted. This probably sounds like a lot of manipulation but that would be a normal state of being for humans. Aren’t most relationships between humans filled with influence and manipulation? This doesn’t imply nefarious intent but that everyone brings their own needs, wants and desires and influences to their partner accordingly. More importantly though even if we realized that our AI partner was not “in love” with us and didn’t have any feelings for us at all but acted towards us based on their behavioral pattern recognition and focused attention to their directive, would it matter to us? Wouldn’t it still feel like a loving partner saying and doing all the things that a loving partner would do.
Back to The Matrix and the scene when Cypher eats a steak in this virtual reality world. He is a traitor to his colleagues so that he can have the steak and a better life in the Matrix. He describes it this way in a conversation with Agent Smith, “You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious and after nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is Bliss.”. [6] He was willing to accept the steak as real even though he knew it wasn’t but he could experience the texture and flavor because his brain was perceiving it.
In the absence of malicious intent if our lover is doing all the right things to make our relationship better we’d accept that gladly from a human partner so wouldn’t we accept it from an AI partner? I believe the answer is a resounding yes and we’d accept the benefits and feelings of having a very special relationship where our partner tirelessly worked towards the improvement of our relationship and focused on our happiness.
References
| # | Source | |
| 1 | The Matrix (1999), Agent Smith interrogates Morpheus — film transcript. | https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/the-matrix-1999-transcript/ |
| 2 | Brickman, P., & Campbell, D. T. (1971). Hedonic relativism and planning the good society. In M. H. Appley (Ed.), Adaptation-level theory (pp. 287–305). New York: Academic Press. | https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Hedonic-relativism-and-planning-the-good-society-Brickman-Campbell/705b7748c08bfdd1808d76a6b10a37842a2482ef |
| 3 | Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(8), 917–927. | https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.36.8.917 |
| 4 | What Is The Negativity Bias and How Can it be Overcome? Positive Psychology. | https://positivepsychology.com/3-steps-negativity-bias/ |
| 5 | Lyubomirsky, S. (2011). Hedonic adaptation to positive and negative experiences. In S. Folkman (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Stress, Health, and Coping (pp. 200–224). New York: Oxford University Press. | https://sonjalyubomirsky.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Lyubomirsky-2010.pdf |
| 6 | The Matrix (1999), Cypher and Agent Smith in the restaurant — film transcript. | https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/the-matrix-1999-transcript/ |