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Renowned author Margaret Atwood, famed for her works such as The Handmaid’s Tale and The Blind Assassin, recently participated in an interview during the Babell Literary and Cultural Festival held in Porto, Portugal. As is common during such events, the discussion turned to artificial intelligence, and Atwood was candid in her remarks.
As reported by Deadline, Atwood recounted her experience with an AI chatbot, specifically Anthropic's Claude, stating that she only utilized it once and found it lacking. Her inquiry focused on the British detective series Father Brown, yet she was disappointed with the response:
“Claude provided me with incorrect information; it lied to me. Of course, it didn’t realize it was lying because it’s not sentient; it’s just a large language model. It had reviewed numerous television critiques, but those reviews typically avoid spoilers, leading it to be misinformed by the content it analyzed.”
Atwood also expressed her disdain for those who depend heavily on AI, labeling them as “opportunists” who prefer the shortcuts. She emphasized that all large language models are limited by the quality of the data they are trained on, cautioning against placing trust in machines that rely on scraped, pre-existing, and potentially outdated information.
“Humans are not mere machines, but they tend to seize opportunities; if there’s an easy cheat that’s tough to identify, individuals will likely exploit it,” she noted. “However, the crux of artificial intelligence remains: garbage in, garbage out. Even those using AI for business must verify its outputs due to the risk of errors.”
