system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[The Matrix] Aren't there better batteries than human bodies? What about whales, or ants, or actual batteries?
gpt
To hell with all the "the script wasn't supposed to be like that" answers. That is irrelevant to how the movie turned out and it is not in the spirit of this sub.

It didn't need to be practical. The machines in the matrix were not malevolent, the humans were the ones risking the destruction of both races just to win the war. The machines created the matrix as a way to stop the war without destroying them. They created a utopia where humans could live in peace without being a harm to anybody. To machines, a virtual world is just as tangible as a real one.

The humans were used as batteries to help power the matrix, as a way to alleviate some of the egregious power costs necessary to keep the system running. This is because they were there, they didn't have a billion whales locked in nice little pods, did they?