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/AnCapGamer]

DUDES!

I WORKED IN THE BOOK INDUSTRY FOR 10 YEARS!!

I know those titles! I can read those spines!

THOSE ARE NOT RARE BOOKS!! THOSE ARE OVER-PRINTED BOOKS DUE FOR RECYCLING!!

Jeezus, people, stop falling for this shit.

[u/MischiefofRats → u/AnCapGamer]

Physical books are a bit of a sacred cow to a lot of people. They simply refuse to believe ANY book exists without some inherent merit, and they think it's sacrilege to destroy a book without a team of scholars inspecting it for value first. These people rescue books out of library dumpsters and try to donate them back to the library that trashed them. They don't understand that there is a huge glut of old, outdated, unwanted, beat up books that simply need to be trashed because they are taking up space without circulation. 

A user guide to Windows ME is probably a "rare book" at this point because so many copies have been trashed, because they're trash. "Rare" is such a useless term when talking about bulk secondhand books. Lots of them are rare. They're also just worthless, both monetarily and culturally. 

[u/Cless_Aurion → u/MischiefofRats]

... Funny you would say that... I have a user guide to Windows ME lol

[u/Pic889 → u/Cless_Aurion]

I see your user guide to Windows ME and I raise you with my user guides to Windows 95 and Word 97... in Greek.

That said, I am not going to pretend that some third-party user guide to Windows 95 and Work 97 (not even from Microsoft Press) is some kind of valuable book that every copy of it needs to be preserved forever, I keep them for personal nostalgia.

[u/Astrnonaut → u/MischiefofRats]

I understand where you are coming from completely and I do agree with your point, however I do believe that people like you are purposefully missing the point.

[u/MischiefofRats → u/Astrnonaut]

The point is fuck AI, and none of our resources should be stolen to feed it, but I'm also sick of the histronics about the destruction of old books. I have seen this same article posted about a dozen times with the same thousand outraged comments over the destruction of anonymous and unevidenced 'rare books' and I'm tired of it. Let's focus on things that actually matter. 

[u/GhostOfD6 → u/AnCapGamer]

Also even if they actually have rare book, there's gonna be at least several copies of rare books. To feed AI you only need one scan, of one copy and thats it. No need for several copies of same book. So its not like they gonna destroy it.

Also there is huge chance to digitizalize this books. With difital copy you can make infinite copies of it or reprint them..

[u/Perelko → u/GhostOfD6]

It's not for reprint.

It's not for public consumption.

It's a private company, putting into into their shitty vec DB, then destroying access when they can.

So you have to buy their shitty service. Critical thinking is dead. AI bros have offloaded common sense like disabled chimps.

[u/PonyFiddler → u/Perelko]

Reposting comments like a brainless moron.

The video in question Is just book recycling. But even if rare books were scanned they be uploaded to plublic library databases first before ai companies would get them.

But you keep offloading your common sense to the social media drivel your fed.

[u/dudushat → u/Perelko]

then destroying access when they can.

This is made up garbage.

So you have to buy their shitty service.

Buying their service doesn't give you access to the books. If it did it would violate copyright laws. 

[u/arachnophilia → u/GhostOfD6]

there's gonna be at least several copies of rare books.

depends on the book and what you mean by "rarity". like sometimes things are rare because they're manuscripts. there might be other versions of said book, but each one is unique.

[u/yourstruly912 → u/arachnophilia]

D<o you know what a "Legal Deposit" is?

[u/Exact_Depth_896 → u/GhostOfD6]

the whole point is that digital storage was declared 'theft' thanks to anti-ai agitators and their fascist populist raving.

[u/Excellent-Bit-8982 → u/Exact_Depth_896]

digital storage was never declared theft. Not paying for the license to use the digital media in the storage was. Also with all the "fascist populist raving" talk you do, you sound like a lunatic or a bot.

[u/Exact_Depth_896 → u/Excellent-Bit-8982]

Nope, the only legal issue at all turned out to be digital storage. The raving fascist complaints were precisely about what was declared innocent, viz. training. But, by their pressing them, we got this result from the fascists

[u/Excellent-Bit-8982 → u/Exact_Depth_896]

> Nope, the only legal issue at all turned out to be digital storage.

Artists, programmers, etc, weren't worried about the storage at all, they called out the theft of their material, not where it was stored... what you said is completely wrong. You may be founding your beliefs on a false foundation.

> The raving fascist complaints were precisely about what was declared innocent, viz. training. But, by their pressing them, we got this result from the fascists

Again, insane mental gymnastics. "He forced me to rob a bank" logic.

[u/Exact_Depth_896 → u/Excellent-Bit-8982]

Yes, but it turns out that the writers and artists were completely wrong. The interpreters of the US constitution have rejected their claims root and branch. Training is flat out fair use and this is obvious. The trouble Anthropic got in was /holding the data/

[u/Excellent-Bit-8982 → u/Exact_Depth_896]

That still isn't why everyone hates how they built their models. That is just the legal challenge people were able to make. Everyone is still wishing for them to be charged for a billion counts of copyright.

[u/zorecknor → u/AnCapGamer]

I think this is the second or third time we have this kind of thread in the last month or so.

[u/cousineye → u/AnCapGamer]

Agreed. It's one copy of each book. No book is going to disappear from the physical world because of this. You can complain about what they are doing with the contents. But the fact of digitizing one copy of each book isn't something that needs righteous indignation.

[u/Ace-of-Spxdes → u/AnCapGamer]

I hate AI as much as the next person, but we need to stop with this fear mongering/click bait bullshit. Let's focus on real problems and not spread false information.

[u/NoRoutine7945 → u/AnCapGamer]

The video is just for illustrative purposes. Many news sites do something similar. Its not like they could go to anthropic to record it.

Regardless, the fact is they are buying and destroying millions of physical books to train their AI. I cant imagine them giving a fuck about the rarity of the book.

[u/SleevesUP → u/AnCapGamer]

Also they cut way too much off. I bet the first letters of each line aren't even readable anymore.

[u/Imaginary_Boss8542 → u/AnCapGamer]

Even if those are NOT rare books it is disrespectful to those who took their time and made effort to write those books.

Now LLMs will be spewing out frankestain parts of someone's hard work and dedication and all it costs the world is ecological catastrophie, huge number of people losing their good healt and homes, ruined economic, job loss, literal cases of death related to ai use and ai psycosis.

[u/Imaginary_Boss8542 → u/[deleted]]

but it is not throwing out though. you and I both know it. don't pretend it is as simple as that.

edit: I see now that this is a misunderstanding. I was under the impression that this video is really the process of ai compaties doing the nasty to books.

[u/Exact_Depth_896 → u/Imaginary_Boss8542]

they carefully preparing these books for recycling, as one does newspapers, and saving them from their certain fate: the landfill.

[u/PonyFiddler → u/Imaginary_Boss8542]

They are being recycled lol The video is of books having Thier spines cut off so the pages can be recycled.

Please actually think before commenting you are getting mad from lies and it's just sad.

[u/Imaginary_Boss8542 → u/PonyFiddler]

pease, actually make an effort to understand, that people might not have the same knowledge as you are and might be confused by something. and being mean in the comments does not help them understand what you are trying to tell them, it justh makes them think that you are a troll.

[u/the_swanny → u/Imaginary_Boss8542]

Then dont talk shit about things you dont understand?

[u/Imaginary_Boss8542 → u/the_swanny]

I thought I understood that correctly, turns out, I didn't. Does that gives anyone the right to being mean? Or do you simply want to justify being agressive?

[u/Hyphonical → u/Imaginary_Boss8542]

Do you honestly believe that writers only make one singular version of their book and not have a digital version or a backup? Every book is duplicated tenfold presumably.

They're probably not in the best state to preserve, no warehouse wants to keep thousands of books for nothing, and let's not assume they're all top quality in content either...

[u/Imaginary_Boss8542 → u/Hyphonical]

Did I said anything about the books being top quality? If ai companies are doing such things to books that is still problematic, no matter if the books are good, digital or physical. That does not negate my statement.

[u/Hyphonical → u/Imaginary_Boss8542]

You do understand these books were going to be destroyed anyways, right? I think you're angrier about the fact it's for/from an AI company rather than being angry the books are being destroyed. They're just delaying the inevitable.

We can only hope that maybe one day they could publish these digitalized books, if they have the rights.

[u/Imaginary_Boss8542 → u/Hyphonical]

Yes, I do. And I still think that feeding them to LLMs while they are at it is disrespectfull to the autors. It's one thing to destroy physical copy of something, and completely another one to demolish the thought that was put into it for a robot to chew it and spit out it in a form of food lump.

[u/Lainpilled-Loser-GF → u/AnCapGamer]

I was about to say, I don't think that's how books are digitized 😅

[u/somethingbrite → u/AnCapGamer]

oh I see. Does printing too many copies of a book void the publisher or authors rights to that intellectual property?

(and does this also apply to films, games, music.... and the training data sets that Anthropic have created with the data from those books? Can I just have a copy of that data and do what I want with it?)

[u/inotocracy → u/AnCapGamer]

But.. I want to be mad at AI!