I remember reading on Stack Overflow that the writers originally wanted for the human minds to be critical to a neural network, not actually used as a power source, but Hollywood executive producers didn’t think cinema audience could understand this concept:
“The original story had the brains of the humans being used as part of a neural network for additional computing power. But the suits thought that was too hard for people to understand.” [0]
“The original story had the brains of the humans being used as part of a neural network for additional computing power. But the suits thought that was too hard for people to understand.” [0]
[0] https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/19817/was-executiv...