Pluribus Paradox: The AI Efficiency Trap
Apple TV’s Pluribus is a warning: pure AI efficiency kills the friction and struggle required for true innovation.
Generative AI drives massive efficiency but risks creating a “frictionless” hive mind that suffocates strategic agency.
Algorithms average out the necessary “jagged edges” of creativity, raising the floor of performance but lowering the ceiling of genius.
Leaders must intentionally preserve organisational struggle and dissent to prevent the slide into comfortable mediocrity.
If you haven’t been watching the new Apple TV thriller Pluribus, you are missing the most important business parable of the decade.
On the surface, it’s high-concept sci-fi. Carol Sturka (played with gritty brilliance by Rhea Seehorn) is a unsocialable novelist who finds herself the lone holdout in a world infected by a “happiness virus.” This mysterious pathogen connects humanity into a singular hive mind; optimistic, efficient, and relentlessly pleasant. The “infected” are happy. They are productive. They are collaborative.
They are also creatively dead.
CEOs are trained to hunt for friction and kill it. They want “seamless” integration, “effortless” customer experiences, and “optimised” workflows. They are building the Pluribus hive mind in organisations, powered by the next generation of AI.
But as I watched Carol Sturka fight to preserve her right to be miserable, I realised she wasn’t just fighting for bad moods. She was fighting for the very inefficiency that makes us human. And, ironically, the only thing that drives true innovation.
Am I odd to think a TV show predicts our demise? No. Because the “Singularity” might not arrive as a Terminator stepping on a human skull. It may arrive as a warm blanket of algorithmic convenience that suffocates our will to choose, create, and struggle.
Here is the uncomfortable truth for every leader reading this: If you optimise away the struggle, you optimise away the value.
The Optimisation Trap
Let’s look at the facts. We know that Generative AI is compressing the marginal cost of cognition to near zero. A landmark report by McKinsey estimated that generative AI could add up to $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy.
In 2025, we are seeing this play out. Efficiency metrics are through the roof. Coding, copywriting, and data analysis are faster than ever. In the world of Pluribus, the hive mind is the ultimate efficiency engine. No arguments, no miscommunication, just pure execution.
For a CEO, this is the seductive dream.
Why deal with messy human alignment when you can have digital alignment? Why tolerate the “Carol Sturkas” in your organisation who push back, complain, and delay the launch?
The Death of Friction is the Death of Strategy
In the TV show, the “infected” lose their agency because they no longer need it. Their desires are anticipated and fulfilled by the collective before they even form the thought.
Could this is be the trajectory of our current “predictive” AI economy? Are we moving from recommendation engines to fulfillment engines.
Historian Yuval Noah Harari warned us about this in his 2024 treatise Nexus. He argued that when an external system can know us better than we know ourselves, “free will” becomes a luxury item.
If an AI CEO can predict market shifts, execute strategies, and optimise supply chains better than you, your “happiness” (or success) is guaranteed, but your relevance is zero. Like the citizens of Pluribus, we risk becoming “wireheaded”, a concept where the reward centres are triggered without the effort.
If AI solves every problem before it hurts, your leadership team loses the cognitive “struggle” required to build resilience. You don’t get a stronger company; you get a brittle one.
The Creativity Crisis
The most chilling aspect of Pluribus is not the hive mind’s violence, but its blandness. The art created by the “happy” collective is technically perfect but soulless. It lacks the jagged edges of pain that define human masterpieces.
This mirrors the current crisis in generative creativity. As Wharton professor
frequently points out, AI acts as a “jagged frontier” of capability, it raises the floor of mediocrity but potentially lowers the ceiling of genius by averaging out the outliers.Creativity is, by definition, inefficient. It requires divergent thinking, taking the wrong path, hitting a dead end, and suffering through the “messy middle.” If we use AI to smooth out these bumps, we don’t get better strategy; we get average strategy, faster.
Carol Sturka’s resistance is driven by her “negative” emotions; anger, skepticism, fear. These are the engines of her survival. A company that uses AI to enforce “cultural positivity” and “seamless workflow” purges the very dissent that sparks the next pivot.
The CEO’s Playbook: Managing the Bliss
So, does this mean we smash the servers? No. But it means we must govern AI differently.
The “demise of humanity” isn’t biological extinction; it’s the extinction of meaningful struggle. If you are a leader today, you are standing at the threshold of the Pluribus virus.
Here is how you avoid the trap:
Preserve the Strategic Friction: Identify the struggles in your business that add value. Strategic debate, creative brainstorming, and ethical wrestling matches should never be outsourced to an algorithm. If a meeting feels too smooth, someone isn’t thinking.
Protect the Outliers: AI pushes toward the mean. Human creativity lives in the tails of the distribution. Protect your “difficult” people, the ones who, like Carol, refuse to integrate into the seamless workflow. They are your immune system against mediocrity.
Define “Better,” Not Just “Faster”: If your AI strategy is purely about efficiency, you are building a hive mind. You need to incentivise the emotion and the friction that ensures you are building something people actually care about.
As we watch Carol Sturka fight the wave of forced happiness on our screens, let’s remember that her battle is ours. We must save our companies from our own bliss.
Further Reading from Substackers
(One Useful Thing): Essential reading for the data on how AI reshapes work and the “jagged frontier.” (The Intrinsic Perspective): For the philosophical heavy lifting on consciousness and the threat of AI “flattening” our culture. (Marcus on AI): For a necessary dose of skepticism regarding the “inevitability” of AGI.References
Harari, Y. N. (2024). Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. Penguin Random House. https://www.penguin.com.au/books/nexus-9781529933611
McKinsey & Company. (2023, June 14). The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/tech-and-ai/our-insights/the-economic-potential-of-generative-ai-the-next-productivity-frontier
Mollick, E. (2023). Centaphors and the jagged frontier of AI. One Useful Thing.
Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/shoshana-zuboff/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism/9781610395694/