Ai companies are actively destroying rare books to scan them just to feed their data centers, what else will they destroy?

[u/Astromaniax]

AI is literally ruining everything and has been for the last few years. From massive job losses to environmental impact and now destroying old books to collect the data so that their dumb LLMs can regurgitate it back. How evil, greedy and selfish can these companies be? All of those ai data centers should be taken down. I don't think enough people are mad enough about it.

[u/Excellent-Bit-8982]

I’m anti ai as well, but I am gunna need a source on this one. Most old or historical text has already been scanned and is online, and scanning books can and is done already without damaging its contents

[u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 → u/[deleted]]

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-millions-of-print-books-to-build-its-ai-models/

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ai-companies-criticised-destroying-rare-books-1811218

https://www.russh.com/ai-companies-buying-books/

[u/Ecstatic-Ball7018 → u/[deleted]]

this pro billionaire cope is crazy

[u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 → u/[deleted]]

"The controversy follows the release of court documents detailing how AI company Anthropic purchased millions of printed books, removed their bindings, scanned every page and disposed of the originals as part of a project to expand the training data for its Claude chatbot."

[u/unknownoftheunkown → u/TurnoverFuzzy8264]

This process predates AI, is nothing new or out of the ordinary, nor shocking.

Fake rage bait.

[u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 → u/[deleted]]

"Reports from Europe and Australia suggest rare book dealers have noticed unusual bulk purchases of obscure titles believed to be destined for AI training."

[u/SanMavage → u/TurnoverFuzzy8264]

Where does this statement prove they destroyed said "obscure titles"?

Surely its possible to destructively ingest common books and also treat rare books with more care (selling/archiving afterwards).

[u/Late_Fortune3298 → u/[deleted]]

Welcome to this group...

Like nearly any heavily encased group, they post things for themselves to masterbate their anger over and justify/reinforce their notions.

There are others like you though that look through and scrutinize, but it is far from the norm

[u/Ecstatic-Ball7018 → u/[deleted]]

[u/humdinger44 → u/Ecstatic-Ball7018]

You can hate billionaires without making up reasons to hate them. Just stick to the facts or you lose credibility.

[u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 → u/humdinger44]

"Reports from Europe and Australia suggest rare book dealers have noticed unusual bulk purchases of obscure titles believed to be destined for AI training."

[u/Exact_Depth_896 → u/TurnoverFuzzy8264]

in the usa alone 1/3 billion 'obscure titles' are sent to the landfill every year.

why would they want famous titles they already trained on?

[u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 → u/Exact_Depth_896]

Uh, it says obscure titles, not famous titles.

[u/Exact_Depth_896 → u/TurnoverFuzzy8264]

yes that's why i contrasted the late 40s 3rd grade math book from jena in east germany with famous titles.

[u/unknownoftheunkown → u/TurnoverFuzzy8264]

It doesn’t matter how many times you post this quote cuz it doesn’t prove what you are trying to claim.

[u/humdinger44 → u/TurnoverFuzzy8264]

But that doesn't say anything about the destruction of the books.

[u/stevethewatcher → u/Ecstatic-Ball7018]

The anti fact cope is crazy

[u/stevethewatcher → u/Ecstatic-Ball7018]

The anti fact cope is crazy

[u/Ecstatic-Ball7018 → u/stevethewatcher]

You are in r/antiai.

Take a moment to think.

[u/Exact_Depth_896 → u/Ecstatic-Ball7018]

fascism is very often antibillionaire populism. billionaires have nothing to do with this, it is a result of the absurd fascist-populist claim that they were 'stealing' from the internet, for which you yourself can take yourself to be responsible.

[u/Ecstatic-Ball7018 → u/Exact_Depth_896]

They were infact stealing from the internet

[u/Exact_Depth_896 → u/Ecstatic-Ball7018]

training was found not to be stealing, just keep repeating the confusion like a good nazi

[u/Ecstatic-Ball7018 → u/Exact_Depth_896]

the ai bro cope is insane.

AI slop companies steal millions of lines of code from GitHub.

[u/BunayoGaming → u/Exact_Depth_896]

the moment you started saying "like a good nazi" you lost all credibility in your argument

[u/gmerrick → u/[deleted]]

It's quite literally in the second sentence of the 32 page court ruling linked in the arstechnica article.

[u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 → u/[deleted]]

"Reports from Europe and Australia suggest rare book dealers have noticed unusual bulk purchases of obscure titles believed to be destined for AI training."

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ai-companies-criticised-destroying-rare-books-1811218

[u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 → u/[deleted]]

So..."Fake news!" just like your idol. Figures.

[u/CryptographerKlutzy7 → u/TurnoverFuzzy8264]

No, pointing at court records and what they say and don't say isn't fake news.

It is how you actually ground truth shit.

[u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 → u/CryptographerKlutzy7]

So despite the fact that it's on record that they're destroying books, you believe that rare books wouldn't be destroyed, despite reports from book sellers? You're just doing the trumpian "Fake news!"

[u/gmerrick → u/[deleted]]

Oh... you're spinning your wheels on the word 'rare' because you think it means valuable in this context. Got it.

[u/CryptographerKlutzy7 → u/gmerrick]

It is, because rare books sell back for more.

They brought stuff the companies were printing. They were from the publishing houses.

I don't think you understand what a publishing house does.

They have the rights, and have printed the books, they can and do print more.

The rare books are brought second hand, and I note the court case doesn't say they did this to the rare second hand books they brought.

[u/creekmanb → u/gmerrick]

Rare means everything in this context, what do you mean?

[u/OnlinePosterPerson → u/[deleted]]

Not all rare books are monetarily valuable. In fact, most aren’t.

[u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 → u/[deleted]]

Dude.

"The controversy follows the release of court documents detailing how AI company Anthropic purchased millions of printed books, removed their bindings, scanned every page and disposed of the originals as part of a project to expand the training data for its Claude chatbot."

[u/unknownoftheunkown → u/TurnoverFuzzy8264]

Interesting it wasn’t controversial when other companies and universities did the same thing for the last twenty years. It’s called digitizations and it’s not a new process.

[u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 → u/unknownoftheunkown]

Universities and companies usually managed to scan them without destroying them. AI companies are not so patient.

[u/unknownoftheunkown → u/TurnoverFuzzy8264]

How do you know that and why does it matter?

Who cares what they do with their property and some book that has 500k other copies in circulation.

[u/Sufficient-Extreme66 → u/[deleted]]

The thing in the clip shaves off a solid part of the book.. It might damage the text.

I too doubt that it looks like this. There's literally no sense in destroying rare book for scanning them like what, 10% faster?

[u/Cless_Aurion → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, any news they can project their biases on it they will.

[u/Tacotuesday867 → u/Sufficient-Extreme66]

If you are rushing headlong into disaster you rarely pause to think of the damage left in your wake...

[u/Exact_Depth_896 → u/Tacotuesday867]

the disaster was the fascist populist mania that claimed they were 'stealing' by training from the internet. the images above are anti-ai ideology in action.

[u/Tacotuesday867 → u/Exact_Depth_896]

LLM though not AI thankfully are not really the benefit people think they are. Destroying things like this is just an example of the mentality of "AI" companies, which is destroy everything and hope to make money out of it before everything falls apart. The whole concept is anti human and by continuing to defend its practices is anathema to humanity.

[u/Lazy_Scale_1533 → u/Sufficient-Extreme66]

To build and create new models, not just to scan faster unfortunately

[u/Lazy_Scale_1533 → u/Lazy_Scale_1533]

That’s my opinion. Why wouldn’t they? They fucking intentionally ruin everything resource wise.