IIRC the original idea was that the machines used our brain capacity as a distributed array but then they decided batteries was easier to understand while been sillier, just burn the carbon they are feeding us, it’s more efficient.
If I could write the matrix reverted, Neo would discover that the last people put themselves in the pods because the world was so fucked up, and the machines had been caretakers that were trying to protect them from themselves. That revision would make the first movie perfect.