AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books

Artificial intelligence labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale.

ISBNdb notes that “print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination”.

“Millions of the most valuable books have never been digitised. They exist only in physical form, scattered across library shelves, used bookstores, and out-of-print catalogues. We get them to you at scale.”

www.news.com.au/technology/online/internet/ai-labs-buy-scan-shred-millions-of-rare-books/news-story/0c3b45a67093ab462a587a0348538ce9

These companies need quantity over quality. They’re gonna buy the cheapest books in bulk they can.

Contrary to what some might think. I’m not taking a stance for AI. I’m just pointing out, no one cared about these books 1 month ago. No one wanted to buy them. No one wanted to read them. That’s why they’ve been sitting on a shelf in a warehouse collecting dust.

They’re not valuable in any sense of the word. They’re only “rare” in the sense that they sold so poorly, there was no point in printing more.

This is such a silly thing to glue on the hate-train. “They’re destroying books no one wanted to read!” Oh no… anyway

Yeah, they sit on shelves because the average person - at least in the U.S. - is steps away from brain death.

If more people were better educated and or literate this would not be happening.