AI Suspicion Kills $2M Book Deal, Uncensored Qwen, AI Destroys Books | EP114

A book good enough for a $2 million deal was pulled because nobody could prove how much AI touched it. Frank sees a nasty mess of trust, copyright and false accusations. Justin’s answer is simpler: if people love the book, who cares?

Plus: Qwen brings near-frontier AI onto a normal-ish laptop, then someone strips off the guardrails. Moderna’s personalised cancer vaccine gives Justin his latest case for AI optimism. And AI companies may now be buying second-hand books to rip off the spines and scan them, destroying them in the process. 

00:36 Can Moderna make cancer history with AI?
01:55 Is AI one breakthrough from winning us over?
04:50 Can Qwen put frontier AI on your laptop?
06:17 Is uncensored Qwen the point of no return?
10:30 Did AI just kill a $2 million book deal?
13:39 Can humans actually spot AI writing?
17:37 When does AI editing become AI writing?
23:24 How do you prove you wrote a book?
29:44 Who cares if AI helped write the book?
34:15 Is AI literally destroying books now?

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► LINKS TO CONTENT WE DISCUSSED

• Moderna, Merck vaccine cuts recurrence and spread of melanoma, raising new treatment hope
• AIDO Cell: A General-Purpose Simulator for Cell Biology
• Free Qwen3.8-27B AI model lands, grabs over 3 million downloads in one weekend
• $2m crime novel deal collapses amid questions over AI use
• Secondhand booksellers in UK and Ireland suspect AI firms behind ‘strange’ bulk orders
• Hidden Airtag reveals Amazon is trashing rare books to train AI

► CONNECT WITH US
For more in-depth discussions, connect Justin and Frank on LinkedIn.
Justin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justincollery/
Frank: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankprendergast/