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.”
That’s sort of the joke. These aren’t treasured first editions. They’re not shredding the Guttenburg Bible. These are single prints sitting in warehouses and abandoned libraries or dumps that nobody has read or carried about in decades. They’re rare because they never got a second edition.
And the process of digitizing the book means disassembling it. So the copy (that nobody wanted) is destroyed as a result.
The article is pure clickbait. These books aren’t valuable, save that they were produced pre-AI. That’s why you can get them in bulk on the cheap.
idk dude. i have a rare first edition that i absolutely treasure. single run, too. it’s a local therapist’s little comic book he drew. he gave a copy to my mother when her parents were divorcing. really effective at explaining masking, just uses different words.
if someone took my copy and pulped it, i’d [disproportionate response. very disproportionate response]
Cool, I guess. How many of these did the AI company destroy?
My niece wrote a ten page short story, had it bound, and added it to her school’s library - a project every kid in her grade level did. If she doesn’t claim it before she graduates, it goes into an archive. And eventually on to a dump.
If they snuck into your room at night, sure. If they walked off with it from a yard sale, idk if you get to complain.
Okay, now consider my nonexistent idiot sister (my sisters are all cool as fuck) stole my copy, how family does. And I ran the first search in a decade for this book, and the rare bookshop that got pulped last week has (had) the only other extant copy. And then my nonexistent idiot sister died in a fire with my book. See why I might be mad at this straw man?
Presumably everyone who would have a personal connection to these destroyed books, already has one.
I dont think AI companies are stealing peoples personal collections while they sleep.
Just to be clear though, fuck AI and those involved.
Well now no one else can form any connection because they’re fucking gone.
That’s how life works, people come and go. We can’t remember every single person that’s ever lived forever, but people can have keepsakes of those important to them in their lives.
Its not sad that more people didnt get to make that specific connection, because there are countless opportunities to connect with people now.
Books aren’t people. They can last a lot longer if properly cared for and not burnt to feed a slop machine.
Books are important because of their human connection. If there is none left to have then its functionally worthless.
I think its a bit egocentric to think our thoughts will be important forever
Human connection can occur across millennia tho. Like, I’m not saying any or all of these are the Aeneid, but people connect to that.
I mean people connect to the Bibble
I think we would be better off forging human connections with those around us than trying to make those connections with the remnants of those long passed.
The bible is also a rough example, because its been modified and translated over the last 2000 years. I’d argue there isn’t much connection to those who originally wrote it, and I don’t think the intent of religion is human connection anyways.
They are buying up used books at rates that push up the cost of used books. That is enough to piss off people legitimately.
We also are fully aware they are not careful. Yes, they will occasionally shred the last few examples of a book that might have otherwise become useful in the future, and there’s no indication that they are archivists. They will eventually destroy or loose this training data and the book contents will be gone to future generations.
Used books are practically free to begin with. Libraries will often give away whole storage containers of books that they don’t want anymore. Bookstores will sell books for pennies on the wholesale market.
Half-Price offers Books By The Yard to be used entirely for decorative purposes. $50 for 40-60 books, largely organized by color and binding style.
We have vastly overproduced the physical reading material relative to consumer reading habits. We have vastly overproduced certain genres and subject matter material. We have overproduced individual volumes. These books are not useful in any material sense. No more than the clothes we overproduce or the snacks we overproduce or the automobiles and electronics we overproduce.
We are swimming in trash. We produce mountains of it. We fill ravines with it. Stop treating hording as a virtue.
if you want any old used book, sure. if you want a specific used book, maybe you might have to spend ten to twenty to a thousand (i have needed some rare texts over the years).
Show me the thousand dollar copy that an AI company destroyed and we can revisit this.
Nothing in the article identities an actual valuable work being destroyed. They’re just “rare”, which can be anything from unpublished manuscripts of failed writers to drafts of screenplays that never got produced to limited run publications that never sold a copy.
Now you’re just being argumentative. It’s destroyed. How can I do that?