Matriculated

"Matriculated." Peter Chung, dir., script. #9 in The Animatrix anthology.

Humans escaped from the Matrix can live on the surface of the Earth, and a small group—along with an intelligent non-human mammal—run an operation where they capture AI machines and attempt to get them to help humans. The humans do not reprogram the machines: in each case, "To convert is its choice to make. [* * *] We can't make slaves of them." Or won't make slaves, but they will seduce them. An insectoid "Runner" is plugged into a human—mostly (plus the one nonhuman mammal)—matrix, and its ego-ideal is shown a world of beauty and potential pleasure, including, by implication, virtual sex, with the Runner gendered male, going after The Girl (the woman who captured him). When Sentinels attack, the captured Runner responds to her plea and saves the woman who plays The Girl in the VR seduction. The Runner plugs them both into the local matrix and approaches The Girl, who, this time, shrinks back in horror. In the words of "delanda_77," "The final scene of the converted robot staring out on the beach is the saddest in the series, the machine was fooled into believing it could be cared for and loved by a human, seen as an equal, but it was only being used, no matter how intelligent (quote from the short "they are only meant to serve"), and it was fooled into believing it could be otherwise. This is essentially the lesson which the machines had learned the hard way, when they initially rebelled against the humans, no matter how hard they tried they were never accepted. Thus the war. This 'runner' learned the human capacity for sheer manipulation […]" . (RDE, 14/06/05)