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This week on the podcast, we’re taking a deep dive into the practical and philosophical sides of artificial intelligence. Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite, catch up on the latest AI news, personal use cases, and the ongoing debates surrounding training data and critical thinking.
Meet the Hosts: Steph and Danica
If you’re new to the show, Steph Pajonas is the CTO of Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press. She specializes in teaching authors how to integrate AI into every facet of the publishing process, from writing and editing to marketing. Joining her is Danica Favorite, the Community Manager at Publish Drive. Danica helps authors navigate the complexities of metadata, distribution, and royalty management, ensuring that once a book is written, it reaches the widest possible audience.
Together, they bridge the gap between the creative spark of writing and the technical hurdles of the modern publishing industry.
AI as an Auxiliary Tool for Human Connection
The conversation kicked off with Danica sharing her experience in a year-long training program for a healing modality called RIM (Regenerating Images in Memory). While the core of this work requires “exquisite human intuition,” Danica noted how AI has become a valuable auxiliary tool for the instructors.
From generating catchy theme songs to help students memorize concepts to creating worksheets and coloring pages, AI handles the “heavy lifting” of administrative and educational tasks. This allows the human practitioners to stay fully present with their clients. Danica also highlighted how “expert bots”—like the one used by author Russell Nohelty—can answer burning questions in the middle of the night, freeing up a professional’s time for deeper, more valuable interactions.
Debunking the “Brain Atrophy” Myth
A major highlight of the episode was Steph’s breakdown of a recent MIT study regarding AI and critical thinking. While some media outlets spun the data to suggest that using AI causes our brains to “atrophy,” Steph clarified that the study’s author later corrected this interpretation.
Kosmyna cautions the study shouldn’t be viewed as a measure of smarts or intelligence on the part of the students using high-tech help. […] “This doesn’t mean that they were stupid or there was some brain rot or brain damage,” she said. “It’s really just, again, how much data flow was happening” inside their brains. (Source)
Instead of inhibiting thought, Steph argues that AI actually spurs critical thinking. When brainstorming a story, the AI might suggest plot points (E and F) that the author hadn’t considered (A through D). This forces the creator to analyze more options and refine their vision. “It doesn’t stop you from thinking,” Steph noted. “It gives you more to think about.”
Navigating Media Bias and “Rage Clicking”
Steph and Danica discussed the prevalence of negative AI headlines, attributing them to the “rage-clicking” economy. Negative stories generate more engagement and revenue for media outlets than positive ones.
The hosts urged listeners to apply critical thinking to the news they consume:
- Question the motive: Who benefits from this headline?
- Look past the soundbite: Is this one sentence representative of the whole study?
- Check for confirmation bias: Are you sharing this just because it confirms a fear you already have?
Danica shared an example of a local meteorologist who was attacked for using AI images. Despite his 20 years of expertise, critics claimed the use of AI invalidated his knowledge—a clear example of how “rage clicking” can overshadow actual facts and experience.
AI in Daily Life: From Burpees to Blood Tests
Beyond publishing, the hosts shared how AI has become an indispensable personal assistant.
- Fitness and Learning: Steph uses Gemini to create a “burpee progression” workout plan and to explain complex grammar rules she misses in her Duolingo French lessons.
- Medical Literacy: Danica discussed using ChatGPT to help interpret perimenopause lab results. While she emphasized that AI is not a replacement for a doctor, it helped her understand her data and reduced her anxiety before her actual appointment.
- Shopping and Lifestyle: Both hosts use Gemini as a “shopping partner” to compare products like mattress toppers and running shoes, or to find recipes that fit specific dietary restrictions.
The “Stolen Data” Debate and the Anthropic Settlement
Addressing the “elephant in the room,” Steph and Danica tackled the persistent claim that AI is built on “stolen data.” They specifically referenced the Anthropic settlement, noting a key detail often missed by the media: the court documents suggested Anthropic had pirated books on their servers but didn’t actually use them to train the Claude model.
Anthropic also represented that neither the LibGen or PiLiMi datasets, nor any portions of those datasets, were in the training corpus of any of its commercially released large language models. (Source, Item 13.)
Steph argued that AI “ingesting” data is fundamentally similar to how authors learn. Just as a human author’s style is shaped by every book they’ve ever read—sometimes even picking up “Britishisms” or specific phrasings—AI learns patterns from the vast sea of human language. “If I can read a book and let it influence my writing, I don’t see why a computer system can’t do that as well,” Steph said.
Favorite Tools & Recommendations
During the discussion, several tools were mentioned as being particularly effective for specific tasks:
- Gemini (Google): Highly recommended for shopping, research, and personal lifestyle queries (like fitness plans).
- ChatGPT (OpenAI): Praised for its ability to explain complex data, such as medical test results or technical concepts.
- Claude (Anthropic): Noted for its “Constitution”—a set of ethical guidelines that give the model a specific “conscience” and personality.
- Duolingo: Steph’s go-to for language learning, supplemented by AI for deeper explanations.
- Dragon Dictation: Mentioned as a precursor to modern AI, long used by medical professionals for charting.
Key Takeaways from This Episode
- AI is an invitation to grow: Use it to handle repetitive tasks so you can focus on the “human” parts of your work.
- Think critically about AI studies: Don’t let sensationalist headlines convince you that technology is harming your brain.
- Use AI as a “junior collaborator”: Whether it’s for medical literacy or story brainstorming, use AI to prepare yourself for deeper human interactions.
- Understand the “fair use” of learning: Recognize that AI learns from patterns much like human authors do.
- Don’t thread the needle: If you’re against AI on principle, be consistent; but if you’re open to using it for marketing, consider being open to its other benefits as well.
Resources Mentioned
- Hard Fork Podcast (Mentioned regarding the Anthropic interview)
- Duolingo
- Gemini
- ChatGPT
Transcript
00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.
Steph Pajonas: Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Brave New Bookshelf. I’m one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO of Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press, where we teach authors how to use AI in any part of their process, and we publish books using AI. We use it to write books, to market books, to publish the books, all of that stuff.
So it is very much part of our process over there. And before I just start chatting about myself, I’m also going to introduce the co-host Danica Favorite, so that, she can tell you about herself and what she does, and then we’ll chat for a little bit. Go for it.
Danica Favorite: Love it, love it. So I’m Danica Favorite.
I am the Community Manager at Publish Drive, where we’re there [00:01:00] for you on every stage of the publishing journey except writing the book, which is why we have my good friend Steph Pajonas, because between the two companies, we really do do everything. So with Publish Drive, we can help you create the right metadata, book description, cover, and then we can help you distribute it to the widest audience possible.
And then once it’s out there, we can help you with some promotions and things like that. And then finally, once you start selling lots of books, we can help you split your royalties if you’ve got people to split royalties with. I love that between the two of our companies, we really do have everything that authors need.
Steph Pajonas: Absolutely. We do.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, we do.
Steph Pajonas: We do. We do. And today it’s just the two of us. We don’t have a guest on for this week. There’s been a lot of shuffling around of guests because, calendars get full and people have other things they have to do. So I saw a gap in the calendar and I thought, Hey, Danica, let’s get together and then just talk about some stuff that’s going on [00:02:00] with AI right now.
Right.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s really perfect timing. I, over the past week I’ve been sending Steph little article snippets of like, did you see this? Oh, this, this, this. And I’ve been going through some training this week on non-AI stuff. But interesting how AI has come into it. And there are a lot of small little things that we can chat about that we’re really excited to share with everyone today. Yeah. So, yeah, like I, I’m super excited, and I guess since I just started talking about the training, we can start there and go into other things. So I am training in a healing modality called RIM, which is regenerating images in memory so that I can eventually use this and help others. It has been one of the most powerful things that have happened, that I have used in my own healing. And it’s really interesting to me because it’s gonna be a whole year long process. And part of it is that we have to, as Dr. Deb Sandella, the RIM [00:03:00] creator, and our instructor was telling us, you have to exquisitely follow your client. And that requires so much deep human interaction, human intuition. You know, as my client is sitting there taking a deep breath or whatever, I’m following them, and I’m right there with them, which is not something the AI can do.
But here’s what’s really fascinating to me is that so many times when we’re in the training, one of the other facilitators or instructors would mention, oh yeah, I use AI for this. I use AI for that. And a lot of these people are licensed coaches, licensed therapists, and for them, AI is just a tool for them to do the other stuff, so that they can be more present with their clients. And so one of the things that they had, and Steph is gonna love this, because I know the FFA has their fun little theme songs. So our training [00:04:00] program has an AI generated theme song, and it’s the best. Isn’t it? It’s so fun. It’s the best. And here’s what I love, and for those of you who’ve taught like preschool or younger children, it took all the main concepts we’re learning and it put it into a song so that this entire song is really about like, if you keep listening to the song and you’re moving to the song, eventually what you’ve got is these concepts that we’re trying to memorize in our memory.
Steph Pajonas: I mean, it worked for us when we were toddlers. Right?
Danica Favorite: Right.
Steph Pajonas: Plenty of things that I’ve learned in my life have been to music. Absolutely.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, and I’d love that we can pop that into AI. They now have this song. They have worksheets. They have this coloring sheet that we did, and it’s all AI generated, because it’s just a tool to help us.
And so it isn’t, hi, we’re replacing therapists. It’s, hey, we’re giving therapists all these [00:05:00] other tools that they can use to help their clients. And so yeah I’m really excited about that, because everyone keeps trying to make AI this big, scary, dangerous thing, but it’s, it’s all in how you use it.
We’ve seen things about using AI as therapy and how in some cases it’s dangerous. But, like my coach actually, yeah, like my coach and somebody else I work with. Oh, we had them on the show, Russell Nohelty.
Steph Pajonas: Oh yeah.
Danica Favorite: He’s got his Russell Bot.
Steph Pajonas: Mm-hmm.
Danica Favorite: And my coach has the same thing where stuff that’s just a burning question in the middle of the night or anything, you pop it in the chat bot and you ask it. And so then when you have those deeper issues, you can actually work with the person. And so, you know, it’s not to say we’re replacing therapy. You should always, and this is gonna be my caution, particularly if you are in some kind of mental health crisis, please make sure that you’re working [00:06:00] with a qualified mental health person.
Steph Pajonas: Yes.
Danica Favorite: However, you can also add ChatGPT as a tool or whatever AI you prefer. That can be your auxiliary tool.
Steph Pajonas: It can be a helper.
Danica Favorite: Right. It’s your helper, and you can use that in conjunction with your therapist. I mean, I had a question for my coach that actually, well, longer story, my coach was like, hey, you can just ask ChatGPT, this question. Don’t ask me.
And I thought, wow. And he was like, my time is more valuable than answering that question.
Steph Pajonas: Good, good. I’m impressed. I’m impressed. So many people would’ve just, you know, taken the time, taken this time out of their busy schedule and done it, even though it didn’t add value to their day whatsoever. But instead by saying, Hey, guess what?
You can just go ask ChatGPT. T his [00:07:00] is information that it will know, it freed up, their time and your time as well.
Danica Favorite: Right. And it, it freed up, you know, like I invest quite a lot of money into my own personal growth and coaching and things like that. And so I’m not spending money to get ChatGPT answers.
I am actually spending money to get expert answers from qualified professionals, and I think that helps me as a person level up, and it helps everyone all around improve, which is where I wanted to hand it over to you to talk about that study.
Steph Pajonas: Oh yeah.
Danica Favorite: About using ChatGPT and critical thinking.
Steph Pajonas: Critical thinking. Right. So a study that was out, I believe it was last year, I’ve, I’m going to link to an article that was in 2025 about it. It came out of MIT and talked about the effects of ChatGPT on your brain right, and [00:08:00] on your brain in critical thinking. The study came out and a lot of people interpreted it as, if you use ChatGPT your brain is atrophying, and you can’t use critical thinking skills anymore, and it’s bad for you, et cetera, et cetera. When really that is not what the study said.
I don’t wanna say at all, but I’m sure that there was a little bit of it in there, which is why people glommed onto it really fast and started spinning it. But the actual author of the study came forward a few months later and was like, hey, you are not interpreting this data in the way that I feel like it should be interpreted.
It does not atrophy your brain or cause you to not be able to critically think anymore. It’s actually a part of the whole process, right? So. When I see people telling me things like, oh, well I don’t wanna use AI for this, because it’s going [00:09:00] to stop me from thinking critically about this issue.
Or, I don’t wanna use AI for this, because I want to be, I wanna use my creative self in the picture, I wanna tell people that AI does not inhibit those things. It actually helps you with those things. So when I’m making a decision on a story, sure, I could probably sit down and think about it for a really long time.
Does my character do A or do they do B? Is it a combination of maybe C and D? I don’t really know. But when I sit down with the AI, and I brainstorm with the AI, and it’s coming up with ideas that I didn’t necessarily think of, that spurs my critical thinking skills to be like, oh, well there’s E and F that I never even considered.
Maybe I should be thinking about that, and I can probably combine that with something else and then we continue to have that discussion, the AI and myself, [00:10:00] about the different possibilities, right? And suddenly the creativity is flowing, the critical thinking skills are happening, and my story is becoming even more rich, becoming richer than it did before.
So I want to caution people when they look at studies to also think critically about them. Feel free to take a study, stick it in AI, ask questions about it. Do the groundwork yourself, if you want to. If you wanna sit down and read the study, go over it, because what you see in the media is usually one person’s interpretation of the story.
And unfortunately, once somebody starts talking about it like that, then it starts spinning and then more people take it and then all of a sudden that becomes another truth. Right? And this is very
Danica Favorite: Right. RIght.
Steph Pajonas: … similar to most things in news and in society nowadays. I’m not saying that all news is bunk or anything like that, I’m just saying that now is a great time to look at some of these foundations and these truths that we have [00:11:00] about AI.
And think a little bit more critically about them.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, I agree. I think there’s a lot of confirmation bias that happens. We’ll read a study and we’ll say, aha, this one sentence proves what I believe about AI. And when you see those articles in the media, number one, they’re looking for what’s gonna get them the most hits at this point, what they’re looking for are the headlines, the pieces in the article of, ooo, this is going to get more people to click on it. It may be one sentence in the whole study. It’s not the whole thing. And I think this is where critical thinking becomes more important than ever, particularly, and we’re not gonna completely go down that rabbit hole, but when you see news headlines and you see stories out there about any topic, the first question you have to ask is, who is benefiting from this story, [00:12:00] from this headline, from this article? What is their perspective on it? I mean, like really who is going, what is that person going to gain? What is that publication going to gain? Because we all know that certain publications, certain media sources, all have their own bias. And so this is where we as critical thinkers really have to say, is this true?
Steph Pajonas: Mm-hmm.
Danica Favorite: And there was something that happened in the media recently. And a friend of mine started talking about it and stated something as fact that I did not believe was true. And so I said, whoa, slow your roll here. I don’t think that’s true. Let’s research it. And so I researched it from a variety of sources.
I put those sources into Gemini, and we went through them and Gemini helped me analyze what the sources, and of course, what this person was saying was not [00:13:00] true. And I was able to go back to the person and say, okay, number one. What I believe to be true is this. Here’s why I believe it. Here are all the various sources.
Here’s what the analysis says. Here’s what the AI analysis says. And the person was like, oh, okay, well, it was just an offhand comment I had heard, like on a media source, and so I just assumed it was true. And particularly in this day and age, we have to stop doing that. We have to think deeper and think more critically, because there’s so much noise out there on all topics, not just AI.
And we are getting sound bites and we are taking them as facts about everything. And I know we’ve talked about the Anthropic settlement a lot. But I still hear people saying, oh, see, AI is bad. That’s why we have the Anthropic settlement. See, they admitted to [00:14:00] stealing our stuff and how many times Steph have you and I said, no, they didn’t. But people believe the soundbites.
Steph Pajonas: People believe the soundbites. And especially about the Anthropic thing it confirms something that they already felt about training AI. Right. So it’s tough. And now here we are, we’re in February, 2026. So, to ground this conversation a little bit, the majority of articles online and on news sources are about negative parts of AI and why? Because they get clicks. And really they, they ri, it riles people up. It gets them mad. They start sharing the news articles on social media and whatnot, and all of a sudden everybody’s angry, everybody’s engaging. That news story is now, racking up the dollar bills, because it’s all monetized and now they’re making a lot of money.
You [00:15:00] can’t make as much money off of a positive story about AI, so it’s just not gonna happen all that often. When it does happen, I get really excited I start sharing it everywhere because I’m like, oh my gosh, I don’t see very many of them.
Danica Favorite: And again, that goes back to what I was just saying earlier is who’s benefiting from this?
Steph Pajonas: Exactly.
Danica Favorite: Who’s making the money off of you rage clicking, rage sharing, rage commenting? That’s what makes the money. And I shared with Steph earlier this week an article or a post from a local meteorologist, and he was coming under a lot of attack for using AI in some of his posts, some AI images and things like that.
And he said, look, I’m a meteorologist with a degree in meteorology. I’ve been doing this job for 20 years. I know all of this stuff. And so yes, I am using AI to do some of the heavy lifting of basic tasks that [00:16:00] do not require my knowledge as a meteorologist, and this way I can focus more on being a better meteorologist.
And rather than people looking at this and saying, wow, this guy with all of his experience as a meteorologist knows so much immediately they’re saying, oh, he used AI, therefore he doesn’t know anything about meteorology. Well, come on, that’s not true. And yet all of these rage clicks of him are getting more attention than him sharing really great information about the weather, and what I think is incredible insight based on his experience.
Steph Pajonas: Right.
Danica Favorite: And so we have to stop, like boom, rage, click everything because it, it’s not helpful. And honestly, those rage clicks, that’s where we’re not [00:17:00] using our critical thinking. So when you’re sharing that information, if you aren’t doing your due diligence to confirm what is true and to share actual facts, then yeah, I would say it’s harming your critical thinking.
But. The irony of it is that you didn’t use AI to not use critical thinking.
Steph Pajonas: Truth. What I love about this conversation is that, there’s just so much to think about when it comes to using AI in our business. Right? But there’s also a lot to think about when we’re using it in our personal lives. You are using it for help with your coaching and therapy and all those kinds of stuff. I’m using it for the most random stuff. It’s like the other day I said, oh my God, Gemini, WTF, I can’t even do one burpee.
I was in an exercise [00:18:00] class and I was like, I can’t even do one burpee. What is wrong with me? And I said, Gemini, help me. Give me exercises to do that will get me to doing an actual burpee before like the end of the year. And Bur Gemini was like, I got you boo. Here you go. This is what you can do. And I went through, and I researched them all, and I found stuff on YouTube, and I’m going to do a burpee before the end of the year is up.
I’m sure I can make it happen. Woo. Right. I use it for help with language stuff, like learning about French. I use it a lot in my French, doing my Duolingo. Take screenshots of it, give it to Gemini and say, hey, why did I get this wrong in Duolingo? I don’t understand this rule. And I use it for that.
You know, I use it for for shopping. I am looking for something that I’m, that I need, whether it’s like a mattress topper for the bed, or I am looking for new running shoes. I ask Gemini for all those, those things too. So like it’s becoming a real important part of our lives. [00:19:00] Of course we focus on that here at Brave New Bookshelf. We focus on AI and publishing, but publishing is just a very small segment of the world that is learning to use AI right now.
It’s getting used in corporations, it’s getting used in education, it’s getting used pretty much everywhere.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. And I really appreciate that perspective because again, like we keep looking at this rage stuff, like I just mentioned in therapy it’s being used. And my therapist has said, Hey I pulled this off of ChatGPT. I think this is really helpful for you. Like this meteorologist was saying, like he’s using it. Everywhere we look, it is being used. And I remember in one of the previous episodes I was telling you all about how my mom handed me her phone and says, get this AI stuff off. I’m like, Mom, you can’t.
And I love, like you were saying, with the shopping. I’m doing, I’m shopping for a few things and Gemini is an incredible shopping partner.
Steph Pajonas: Oh, it’s so good.
Danica Favorite: It’s so good. [00:20:00] It’s so good. And we’ve also talked on the show about our lovely journey with perimenopause and my, I have a hormone doctor and here’s what I’m gonna say about this.
If I Google my perimenopause symptoms, there’s a huge difference between the answers that Google gives me and Gemini gives me…
Steph Pajonas: Yes.
Danica Favorite: very different answers. And what’s interesting, and even my hormone doctor, and again, this is where I say use the professionals with the AI, because all of my symptoms point to a couple of hormone issues.
My hormone doctor has been like, yep, those are your hormone issues. However, we did all the hormone tests, blood, saliva, and urine. Guess what? My test results say the opposite.
Steph Pajonas: Mm-hmm.
Danica Favorite: Which is really interesting. So your symptoms aren’t always what’s really going on. That’s why you need the medical professional to help give you those answers.
But what was great is I just did this one test and, I didn’t [00:21:00] understand it. And my hormone doctor, it’s like a month to get into her. She’s, she’s so busy.
And one of the results was like, critically low. And I’m like, oh my God, am I gonna die? And I just want you to know, Google told me I had cancer.
Steph Pajonas: Oh no.
Danica Favorite: Yeah.
Steph Pajonas: I hate that.
Danica Favorite: I uploaded the test to ChatGPT and they said, oh my God, am I gonna die? And ChatGPT said, this is a very normal test result for a woman in perimenopause. What this number means is, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it was enough to call, I was like, oh, okay, that actually does make sense.
And now when I go and I sit down with my hormone doctor, first of all, I’m not going to the appointment going, oh my God, I have cancer. But also I can go into my hormone doctor and I can be like, okay, so I was concerned about this, but this is what ChatGPT said. What is your take on it, and like, how do we want to adjust the supplements? And what it is one of the supplements that I’m [00:22:00] on is probably not the right supplement.
But again and I like, can you remember pre AI where we would Google our symptoms and come back with…
Steph Pajonas: Dr. Google?
Danica Favorite: Yeah.
And obviously I would encourage you to please, if you are getting your advice from ChatGPT, please also let your healthcare professional know that.
Steph Pajonas: We have a lot of caveats in this episode.
Danica Favorite: We do, we do. We have a lot of caveats, but it was, it was just so great for me to have that moment of it’s reading my test results. And I know on one of her YouTube lives, Elizabeth Ann West was also talking about using it to understand some test results that she had gotten. And so it can be really useful for that.
And, you know, I used it the other day, because I needed to make a recipe, and I have really weird dietary restrictions, and I have to be really specific in what I ask for that I can’t just Google. But if I can put it into Gemini [00:23:00] and say, Hey, Gemini, or even ChatGPT can do it too, is I say, Hey, this is what I want to make.
I don’t know how to make it without these ingredients. Could you please give me some alternatives?
Steph Pajonas: That’s always nice.
Danica Favorite: Yeah.
Steph Pajonas: I just wanna say that going back to the medical stuff, AI is showing up in medical dramas now. I don’t know how many out there are watching The Pit, which is one of my favorite shows now.
I freaking love that show. But when this new season has started, it’s in season two and they’ve got a new attending that’s coming in to fill in for the, for the Noah Wiley character when he goes on sabbatical, Dr. Al-Hashimi, and she is using AI to help her with her medical charting. So when she sits down with a with a patient, she gets out her phone and she explains that the AI is HIPAA compliant and that everything is anonymized and it and private, and if [00:24:00] they consent, do you mind if I use this program to help us with the charting and getting all of your information down? And then they consent and she sticks her phone down and they have a conversation, right? So then that becomes the source material for a transcription, which then gets processed and then ends up in her charting tool.
And then all she has to do is go through it and make sure that all the details are correct, that the correct medication that she subscribed, that she prescribed is in there, all the details about the person and their symptoms, and I was just like, oh look, AI has shown up in my favorite TV show.
Doctors are using it. They’ve actually been using dictation software for a very long time. Dragon Dictation had a medical…a version that people could use. It understood a lot of the medical jargon that doctors used, the medical prescription names, drug names, all that kind of stuff. And that also was na, Natural Language Processing.
[00:25:00] So it was a precursor to the AI that we have now. So all of the stuff is very much in the zeitgeist, right? It’s in our TV shows. It’s being talked about in our companies, in our workplaces. It’s being talked about in the publishing space, which is what we mostly focus on here on this podcast.
But one of the cool things is that now we get to see how it is disseminating out to other places. Right? Besides TV shows. You know, we’re talking about using it for shopping, we’re, we use it to ask questions about our lives and do all these kinds of things. And you have to think about the data that was used in order for it to become as powerful as it is now.
And that brings us to the people who are still. Still saying that the, that it was built on stolen material. Okay. So
Danica Favorite: I love this because like when you were [00:26:00] talking about that with the doctors, I was like, okay, let’s go there next. And you did it. I, I love we’re…
Steph Pajonas: We’re very in sync today.
We’re in sync. Yeah, it’s all good. But yeah, let’s talk about the stolen data thing, because this is what we see a lot also in the publishing space, is I will slide into a Facebook post I see somebody’s talking about, about AI, and they will say something like, I am 100% against AI, because it’s built on stolen data, but I’m thinking about using it for marketing material.
And then you have to just have a nice big sigh. Okay, let’s talk about this a little bit, right, to this person. If you believe that AI was built solely on stolen data, then you probably should not be using it for anything. Guys, it’s all the same data that is built…
Danica Favorite: It’s all the same database, it’s the same training sets, it’s, it was all trained exactly the same way, [00:27:00] using the same data.
Steph Pajonas: Using pretty much the same data, right?
And then each one of these companies takes the data and they work it in certain ways to give their models the personalities and the depth and breadth of information that they have access to. So like Claude has a constitution of the…. The head philosopher at Anthropic was on the Hard Fork podcast last week, and she talked about the fact that she helped develop the Constitution for Claude that tells Claude what it should be doing and should not be doing . It gives it almost like a conscience. Let’s say that, right? It gives it a set of rules and ethical rules in order for it to live by and to help people who ask questions of it. Okay. And then that’s different from the way that ChatGPT was trained.
That’s a little bit different from the way Gemini [00:28:00] was trained. They all have a little bit of a flavor to them. But the underlying training data is billions and billions and billions and billions and billions of words that were scraped from the internet, that were taken from free books that were taken from lots of places.
And unfortunately, going back to the Anthropic settlement, also taken from sets of pirated books, which is what Anthropic is being slapped on the wrist for.
Danica Favorite: Right.
And we also know Anthropic didn’t actually use those pirated books.
Steph Pajonas: Exactly. That was exactly what I was just about to say. In the Anthropic settlement, I think it’s number 13 actually, it says that they actually didn’t use those pirated books to train Claude.
They had it and they stored it on their server. They ultimately didn’t use it, but just the fact that they had it and they stored it, meant that they were holding onto pirated goods, and that’s what they’re being, that’s what they’re being sued over. Okay. So I [00:29:00] don’t believe that any of this data was stolen.
My ethical guidelines say that if I can read a book and learn from a book and possibly even ingest that book in a way that helps me write other books, I feel that is within, within the fair use laws of copyright, right? Yes. All of us do that. We all have millions of books, right. Between all of us.
Danica Favorite: ‘ Cause our styles as an author is really influenced by our tastes as readers.
Steph Pajonas: Yes.
Danica Favorite: If you look, if you look at Steph’s bookcase, you are going to find a whole bunch, and now I know you mostly have your Kindle, but if you look at all of the books that Steph reads, you’re going to find all of those are vastly different in how they have shaped her worldview.
Steph Pajonas: Sure.
Danica Favorite: And how her view of what a good story is and the kind of story she likes. [00:30:00] And it’s the same with me. I have my own personal taste in what I enjoy consuming media wise. And that’s so important to recognize that you couldn’t separate out the hundreds, maybe thousands, of authors we both have read that have informed how we write what we write.
I can remember when I was first a little baby author, high school, college level, baby author, that’s how old I was, I wrote everything with British spelling, and it was because at the time, most of the books that I read were printed in Britain.
Steph Pajonas: Mm-hmm.
Danica Favorite: And with the exception of the word favorite, I’ve always spelled that correctly because it is spelled correctly on my birth certificate.
But…
Steph Pajonas: She’s legally your favorite author, everybody.
Danica Favorite: Yes. Yes, I [00:31:00] am. But that isn’t because I was stealing or plagiarizing from those authors. It’s just that when I was in high school and college, I was like reading a book or two a day.
Steph Pajonas: Sure.
Danica Favorite: And so for me, those Britishisms that were coming into my writing, was 1000% that I had just absorbed it.
Steph Pajonas: Mm-hmm.
Danica Favorite: And going back to the previous episode that Steph and I had just recorded and I was talking about the em dashes, and the reason why we say that it’s an AI tell, is because so many authors have used it. And so the AI has interpreted that as being, oh, this is like commonly how people want to write, so I’m going to write this way.
It’s just the same as Danica picking up on all the British spellings and British phrasings. Although it was really great disappointment to go to England for the first time and realize how I thought I was supposed to pronounce the word is not how they pronounce the word.
Steph Pajonas: Well, all you have to do is watch an episode of Great British Bake Off to understand that they don’t say things the way you do.
Danica Favorite: I’m [00:32:00] telling my beloved Death in Paradise has been a great education for me in that. But like we really have to recognize as authors that there, there’s no stealing happening here.
Steph Pajonas: There’s no stealing happening here. I f I can read a book, ingest it, understand it, and then have it influence the way that I write books, then I don’t see why computer systems can’t do that as well.
This is where I don’t discriminate. Seriously, if I sat down and I thought, how would I train a computer to understand the human language, human, English language? I would be like, well, I’ll give it a lot of English language. Maybe it will learn from patterns. Maybe it’ll learn, and this is why there’s so much data in the training set because of the fact that the more, the more it has, the more examples it has, it can give us a better [00:33:00] output.
I’ve never felt like this was stealing. Never. And I…
Danica Favorite: Yeah, I didn’t either.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah. And even so, my books are in that Anthropic suit, like the, my books were part of that pirated, pirated data dataset that didn’t even get used. Right? And I still don’t feel, feel mad about it. Like, whatever. Glad they…
Danica Favorite: Yeah. I,
Steph Pajonas: I’m glad they were.
Danica Favorite: I’ve never had a moment where I was mad, because I think about even how we teach children how to read. Like they just absorb all of this material and they’re reading everywhere. And I, I can remember taking my kids out and I’d be like, okay, read that sign. Read that sign. And they learn by absorbing all of that around them.
And that’s the best replication of what we’re doing with the computer systems, and with training them. And so I appreciate people who feel like [00:34:00] they need to take a moral stand against AI. But you’re fighting a losing battle at this point. Like it’s not even a battle, because you can say, okay, I’m not gonna use AI for my writing period.
I guarantee you it is in everything else that is happening around your life, whether you’re aware of it or not, it’s there. And so it’s kind of silly to make a stand against AI. Because if you’re gonna do that, you need to make a stand against technology. Like go back and don’t use your computer, go back to a dumb phone, go back to your landline.
Although, I bet you the systems behind the landline are still being run by AI in some way. But and I’m not saying you have to use AI for all the things.
Steph Pajonas: We’re just saying, you don’t have to take a moral stance that’s completely negative and like basically [00:35:00] sucks all good things out of life.
Danica Favorite: And stop dumping on other authors.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah.
Danica Favorite: And I know we made that point last time as well, but please stop. Stop dumping on other authors and insulting them and calling them names or saying that they’re stealing or whatever. This meteorologist that I was referencing, he made a really good point in his post about how,
like, stop attacking me. If you want to attack anyone, go after the system, go after Meta, go after Google, go after the big companies that are doing this. Like it’s the billionaires who have created all of this and created the system and frankly, we’re benefiting from it. And if you don’t believe that, don’t attack the people who are using the tools that they’re given.
Go after the billionaires and good luck with that too. Lemme know how that goes for you.
Steph Pajonas: Lemme know how that goes for you. [00:36:00] I feel the exact same way. I feel like it’s time to, um, to make a choice. Make a choice to use it or to not use it, which is fine. And also make a choice to, if you wanna use it in one part of your life or the other, that’s fine as well.
But stop trying to thread the needle about things like stolen data, that sort of thing. Like the next person I see that says I’m a hundred percent against AI, but I’m thinking about using it for marketing, I’m gonna be like, you are not a hundred percent against AI. You are considering using it. And so like time to step back from that hard line that you keep using and consider the fact that you’re gonna be open to it instead.
Danica Favorite: Right, and rather than having that hard line, think about this, and again, this is something we’ve talked a lot about in our previous shows, is that rather than having that hard line saying, okay, where can [00:37:00] I let AI do the heavy lifting for me so that it allows me to be more human?
Steph Pajonas: Yeah,
Danica Favorite: Like where is my humanity still really key.
And and that goes back to the critical thinking, like where do I need to think more deeply about this thing? Or where is my thinking really important on this piece of writing? Again, like I said in the previous episode about the em dash, I now think more critically about, do I need the em dash here?
And use that as a tool for growth and expansion, because that is the invitation I think of AI and technology and anything new that comes into our lives is where is this an invitation to grow and expand?
Steph Pajonas: Where is this also a place where your human tastes and your preferences are gonna come in and really show up for your readers as well?
You can still use the tools and [00:38:00] still be you, still have your opinions and your taste and show up for your readers in a way that’s going to really delight them.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, absolutely. I think that is the perfect way to end the show is…
Steph Pajonas: Absolutely.
Danica Favorite: Is really thinking about how do you, as a person, show up and delight your readers, and if AI is part of that, great and if it’s not, also great.
Steph Pajonas: Let’s put that out there to the wider world. Let us know how you’re gonna be using AI or not to show readers your tastes, your opinions, and in order to delight them and get them to read your books. We’d love to hear if you have anything that you’re really excited about coming up in 2026 to do these sorts of things for your readers, whether you use AI or not.
Of course. I think the majority of our listeners right now do [00:39:00] use AI for things, or they’re excited or curious about using AI for things. So I have a feeling that most of the answers we get will sway towards AI. But you know what, if you come up, and you take a look at some of the answers and they are things that you can do without AI too, maybe that will also inspire you as well.
Danica Favorite: And also for those of you who are listeners who maybe are feeling a little hesitant. Again, this is a great opportunity for you to really take a look at who you are, what’s important to you, what do you value? Because those values, um, you know, going to like the taste idea, it, it’s your values.
And what those values are and how to deepen that. And I know we’ve gotten some feedback from listeners who this is really a lifeline to them, that maybe they aren’t quite ready to jump out there and say, Hey, I’m using AI. But if we can give you a little bit of that [00:40:00] courage and a little bit more of that trust in yourself, then I think we’re doing our job here.
Steph Pajonas: I think so. All right. I’ll say excellent. This is a great way to end this podcast, everybody. Come on by Brave New Bookshelf at bravenewbookshelf.com. Check out the show notes from today. We will definitely get them up there, tell all of the different things that we talked about today in this episode.
And hopefully we’ll be back next week with one of our guests. Danika, would you like to say anything before we head out?
Danica Favorite: Yeah. Always please make sure you are liking, subscribing to all of the Future Fiction Academy. Future Fiction Press, Brave New Bookshelf, Publish Drive social media. It really is important to all of us to help grow what we’re doing and also make sure you are liking, subscribing on YouTube. For those of you listening to us, if you want to see our cute little faces, particularly you know, Steph and her cute little duo guy, I always smile when I [00:41:00] see little duo behind you. We’re on YouTube. You can see us live. Although every time I meet someone, they always tell me I’m shorter than they think I’m going to be.
So you can’t see it. I am short. But please do follow us, because we really appreciate that. And the more subscribers, the more followers we have, the more this gets shared with others and gets put into the algorithm, because we are still dependent on the algorithm, which run by AI.
Steph Pajonas: Which is run by AI.
Absolutely. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. We’ll be back next week with another show. Okay, we’ll talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.
Speaker: Thanks for joining us on The Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us bravenewbookshelf.com. Sign up for our newsletter and get all the show [00:42:00] notes.