“AI is really just garbage in, garbage out,” Margaret Atwood remarked today with her characteristic wit during a career Q& A at the first-ever Babell Literary and Cultural Festival in Porto, Portugal.
The acclaimed Canadian author came to Portugal’s second-largest city mainly to talk about her memoir, Book of Lives, which was released late last year by Penguin. However, as is typical with Atwood, the conversation covered a wide range of topics and naturally touched on Artificial Intelligence.
Atwood shared that she had experimented with an AI model once, specifically Anthropic’s Claude. But it wasn’t for writing help; she joked that she was actually trying to discover a spoiler for the British detective show Father Brown.
“Claude gave me the wrong answer or it lied. Of course, it didn’t know it was lying because it’s not a human being; it’s a large language model,” Atwood explained. “It had skimmed through many television reviews, but those never reveal endings in online critiques, so it got confused by what it had read about the series.”
Atwood concluded her story about AI by saying that this technology-and how large language models are created by analyzing previously material-just isn’t trustworthy enough for people to rely on.
“Humans aren’t robots but they can be opportunists, so if there’s an easy way to cheat and it’s hard to spot, people will do it,” she stated. “But remember, with AI it’s garbage in, garbage out. Even those who use it for business purposes need to double-check because it can make errors.”
Later in the talk, someone asked Atwood about censorship. She casually referred to it as “a very old story in world history.” Throughout her long career, critics have often labeled Atwood’s works as controversial or explicit due to their raw and inventive takes on power dynamics, gender issues, and politics. Consequently, she’s frequently faced political book bans. Last year alone saw Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale included on PEN America’s list of the most-banned books across U. S. school districts.
“It’s a clever sales tactic,” Atwood quipped when asked about being censored through these bans. “Don’t read this book! It’s too scandalous! And then everyone rushes off to buy it wondering where all the shocking parts are!”
Atwood mentioned that she mostly manages to avoid direct censorship efforts because she resides in Canada-a place largely committed to freedom of speech and thought. Yet she acknowledged that the current political climate in the United States is quite concerning.
“What’s going on right now in the United States is an attempt to suppress political dissent-and we know that’s how dictatorships start,” she said. “Fortunately, Americans aren’t buying into this.”
“And while there isn’t state media over there yet, billionaire pro-Trump supporters are acquiring legacy television stations and newspapers-that’s their strategy right now. However, there’s also a counter-movement emerging with new media platforms gaining large online followings that we should keep an eye on.”
Switching back to literature near the end of her session, Atwood was asked which of her own books is her favorite. Her response was both definitive and playful.
“I don’t ever make such choices because my other books will hear about it and seek revenge,” she joked.
The Babell Literary and Cultural Festival continues until June 29.
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