Johnny Davis , Esquire; Vince Gilligan Talks About His Four-Season Plan for 'Pluribus' (And Why He's Done With 'Breaking Bad')
"How many times have you been asked whether the show is about AI?
I’ve been asked a fair bit about AI. It’s interesting because I came up with this story going on ten years ago, and this was before the advent of ChatGPT. So I can’t say I was thinking about this current thing they call AI, which, by the way, feels like a marketing tool to me, because there’s no intelligence there. It’s a really amazing bit of sleight of hand that makes it look like the act of creation is occurring, but really it’s just taking little bits and pieces from a hundred other sources and cobbling them together. There’s no consciousness there. I personally am not a big fan of what passes for AI now. I don’t wish to see it take over the world. I don’t wish to see it subvert the creative process for human beings. But in full disclosure, I was not thinking about it specifically when I came up with this.
Even so, when AI entered the mainstream conversation, you must have seen the resonance.
Yeah. When ChatGPT came out, I was basically appalled. But yeah, I probably was thinking, wow, maybe there’s some resonance with this show...
Breaking Bad famously went from the brink of cancellation to being hailed as one of the greatest television series of all time. Did that experience change how you approached making Pluribus?
It allowed us to make it. It really did. People have asked me recently, are you proud of the fact that you got an original show, a non IP-derived show on the air? And I say: I am proud of that, and I feel lucky, but it also makes me sad. Because I think, why is it so hard to get a show that is not based on pre-existing intellectual property made?"
