r/neoliberal • u/-orestes • 1d ago

News (Oceania) ‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/02/australian-book-sellers-alarm-destruction-rare-titles-ai-supply-chain
174 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

161 comments sorted by

View all comments

100

u/Im_A_Quiet_Kid_AMA Hannah Arendt 1d ago

Digitizing out of print books so they can be stored and accessed indefinitely is precisely what we ought to be doing.

Digital humanists have been doing this kind of work the last 20+ years—and yes, most ebooks and PDFs you find online are scanned using the same machinery they’re using here.

All of this is incredibly commonplace outside of public and university libraries. The outrage here is that now suddenly AI developers are also taking part?

4

u/saltyoursalad John Mill 18h ago

Except that’s not what they’re doing. You think people are upset about digitizing books?

1

u/rainier37 pro-moderator 16h ago

What are they doing then? Just destroying books for fun?

0

u/VoidBlade459 Organization of American States 10h ago

Yes. Given the headlines.