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Re:Thinking with Adam GrantMargaret Atwood on what AI can’t replace | ReThinking with Adam Grant
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At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Atwood on AI, originality, memoir-making, and resisting censorship pressures today
- Atwood argues current AI is good at formula and pastiche but lacks genuine originality, coherent plotting, and convincing inner life for characters.
- She reframes so-called AI “hallucinations” as simple machine errors and critiques the tech industry’s tendency to anthropomorphize AI.
- Atwood explains why she refuses to use AI to write, while acknowledging narrow “adjacent” uses (definitions, thesaurus-like help) and warning it’s unreliable for facts and mapping.
- The conversation shifts to Atwood’s memoir mindset—memoir as remembered experience rather than exhaustive autobiography—and how painful events can become meaningful stories over time.
- They discuss censorship dynamics, where book bans often backfire by increasing interest, and Atwood connects robust reading cultures (libraries, librarians) with better educational outcomes and civic engagement.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasAI can imitate style, but it struggles with what makes novels “novel.”
Atwood sees AI as competent at remixing formulas and producing passable schlock or pastiche, but not at sustaining original voice, plotting, and especially believable inner life.
Calling AI mistakes “hallucinations” is rhetorical, not descriptive.
She argues the term is used to make AI sound human; machines don’t experience perception or emotion, they just output wrong information.
If a system can’t be trusted on facts, you must constrain it aggressively.
Her examples (wrong supermarket location; absurd snakes/floor image) illustrate that prompt specificity and verification are mandatory, not optional.
The biggest AI risk isn’t replacing novelists—it’s weaponizing perception.
Atwood flags deepfakes and political propaganda as more consequential than AI-generated fiction, because they can distort shared reality at scale.
Memoir is curated memory, not comprehensive life accounting.
She distinguishes memoir from autobiography: the point is what you remember (often catastrophes, near-death experiences, and vivid “stupid things”), not an itinerary.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesThat's because they want to make AI sound human. So humans have hallucinations. Um, machines don't. They just make mistakes.
— Margaret Atwood
I think it's mo- the most important thing about it is its ability to create deep fakes for political propaganda purposes.
— Margaret Atwood
So what you remember is usually stupid things you did, uh, stupid and evil things other people did to you. Not so much the evil things you did to other people. You tend to forget those.
— Margaret Atwood
...the power of those people is dependent on your believing that they have that power.
— Margaret Atwood
"Pray, uh, that you will never have the opportunity to be a hero."
— Margaret Atwood
SPEAKERS
Adam Grant
hostOrganizational psychologist and professor known for hosting the interview podcast ReThinking with Adam Grant.
Margaret Atwood
guestAcclaimed Canadian novelist and poet, author of The Handmaid’s Tale and other major works.
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
