The new Apple TV series Pluribus stars Rhea Seahorn as one of a handful of people not overwhelmingly happy. Now that the first two episodes are out and people know what it’s about, some have wondered if this is all a metaphor for artificial intelligence.
Creator Vince Gilligan recently told Variety he thought up and wrote the show before AI and large language models like ChatGPT really gained prominence in recent years. That said, he won’t fight anyone who’s made those connections, just as he isn’t planning to explain things to the degree he did with Breaking Bad. “One thing I did wrong [there] was telling people, ‘This is what that meant!’ I look back and it was so tiresome,” he recalled. Going forward, he’s following advice once given to him by Michael Mann in 2002: “Just tell a good story, let the audience figure out the theme. That’s their job.”
Lest you think he’s secretly an AI booster, that’s not the case at all: after previously telling Polygon he’d never use it, Gilligan used Variety to further affirm his stance. “I hate AI. It’s the world’s most expensive and energy-intensive plagiarism machine. I think there’s a very high possibility that this is all a bunch of horseshit. It’s basically a bunch of centibillionaires whose greatest life goal is to become the world’s first trillionaires. I think they’re selling a bag of vapor.”
Gilligan’s beef with the technology primarily concerns “Silicon Valley assholes” who’ve put all their eggs in the AI basket. Because should it develop “a true singularity that has its own soul, and therefore its own identity,” does that mean companies like Meta and OpenAI have created digital slaves to monetize? He certainly seems to think so, and warns audiences to not get impressed by Silicon Valley’s latest shiny toy.
Like Heretic, the Pluribus credits declares it as a show “made by humans.” Whatever else you take away from it in the coming weeks, know that it was all done with a personal touch.
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