This is something I always wondered about. As the creator of the titular Matrix, he's kinda the main bad dude until Smith starts ruining everyone's trout for both humans and machines. Yet I detected absolutely no....uh....feeling in him. Yes he is a machine but the whole point is that Matrix machines evolved to think for themselves and programs in The Matrix can obviously think, feel and evolve. They're just as sapient or sentient or whatever as the humans.

But I didn't get that impression from. He was just performing his task, his purpose if you will.

So should he be considered malevolent?