Warning: Contains spoilers for Pluribus. Apple TV.
Do you have the first two episodes of ? Multiple busesthe new science fiction series break the evil AND You should call Saul. Creator Vince Gilligan?
I watched the first two episodes and then looked at some reviews online and I think they are all missing something. Multiple buses AI isn’t mentioned once, but I find it impossible to watch it without thinking it’s a scathing, self-aware critique of our relationship with it.
An encrypted message
I spend my days following developments at OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and the rest, so I’m probably more informed about AI than most, but I think Gilligan is sending us a warning about what would happen if a superintelligent being really took over our planet, as AI is slowly doing.
IN Multiple buses Earth receives a coded message from space, coming from a distance of more than 600 light years. It takes a while for scientists on Earth, but once they realize it’s genetic code (from a virus, if you will), they begin to recreate it and test it on lab mice.
When the virus inevitably invades the human population, infected people completely lose their individual personalities and begin to devote themselves solely to the spread of the virus, gaining a sense of peace they have never experienced before. The virus replaces your personality and individual self with a connection to a hive mind. During the initial stages of infection with the virus, people experience something similar to a seizure, which of course can lead to devastating incidents depending on what the host was doing at the time of infection. The global death toll from car crashes, explosions, fires, and downed planes stands at over 88 million, even as survivors, who now share the same Hive spirit, express their joy at the infection of the last 13 people on Earth who have been shown to be immune so far.
The hive-minded humans now just want to take care of the 13 survivors and try to help them until the day they can decipher their immune code and restore them to their dubious state of calm. Humans, the minds of the hive, seem incredibly benevolent and are incapable of even small acts of violence. All they want to do is help you complete your tasks with a smile of unwavering customer service, while they slowly destroy the world you’ve known and humanity itself.
Can I help you with something?
Does this remind you of anything? Well, for me, it’s the human embodiment of the ever-upbeat and happy chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT that I write about every day. ChatGPT’s website reads in all caps: “How can I help you?”, while report after report suggests that artificial intelligence is taking away our jobs, that the massive amounts of energy required to do so are having a devastating impact on the environment, and are linked to rising teenage years. Anxiety and self-harmand our economy may even collapse if the AI bubble bursts.
The parallels go even further. One of the criticisms of AI is that it takes away our ability to have real human connections. One thing that became clear to me early on in my work was how much people rely on AI as an ever-present friend and emotional support. The one “person” who is always there for you. This only became clear to me when ChatGPT was unavailable for a few days earlier this year. We asked our readers how they coped with the crisis and received hundreds of emails from readers desperately trying to cope with the departure of their ever-reliable companion. The backlash was just as strong when OpenAI was updated to ChatGPT-5 and its personality changed and became less warm and friendly. Many users felt that their “friend” had undergone a personality change and were not happy about it.
IN multibus, Seahorn’s character resists all Hive Mind’s attempts to create emotional connections because he knows it’s not real and he doesn’t talk to anyone anymore.
The question is: how long can this last? How long will it take for her to accept the Hive Mind as her friend and stop resisting?
The ghost of Gilligan’s Hive may be fiction, but its smile is real: it beams from every chatbot window, always ready to help, until one day, too late, we realize it’s us who’s been written about.
