system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[The Matrix] Why didn't the machines, with all their technology and power, colonize space?
gpt
Why are we assuming they didn't / haven't?

We know that they honored the accords and kept most of the human population alive and in a simulated reality when we surrendered to them, and that the remainder ran around a small chunk of mostly-underground Earth without any astronomical observational tools.

Quite reasonable to assume they had, but it wasn't an agenda item in the Zion rezoning meetings so never came up in the context of the films.