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.”
Combine this mass burning of humanity’s canon with the onslaught of AI generated nonsense and think about what is doing to do our history and knowledge going forward.
Humanity is being dragged into a black hole by tech-fetishist demons.
“I personally have mixed feelings about all of this,” one small bookseller told tech news website 404 Media last week.
The bookseller explained that in April, he suddenly went from selling around 20 books per week to hundreds — including obscure and out-of-print works.
“It benefits me financially as well as by clearing out old inventory that is otherwise unlikely to sell,” he said. “I’ve been well suited for these sales with inventory from overseas and foreign language books. On the other hand, I don’t like the end-use, and I don’t like that uncommon books are being pulped.”
Then stop selling rare and out of print books to an AI company, you fucking doorknob.
Greed knows no bounds.
To be honest, I’d be MUCH less against this practice if this shredding at the very least included saving the original scans at at least 300 dpi for everyone to access, freely.
Ideally, they wouldn’t cut them by the spine, but even giving the despined ones to an archive/library would be just above the unpermissible line.
Despining, scanning and public access archiving is borderline permissible.
“We must destroy this precious archive of humanity so our competitors can’t also scan it”
So it can’t be traced that they’ve used said books for training data.
Yes, destroy all evidence so there will be no news story or any trace at all about what they’ve done.
😏
“It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times?” Stupid AI!
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
“Book burning is good actually because no one reads them”
Summarized by biological human intelligence
Typical fucking anti-human attitude. If it doesn’t make money then it’s useless.
You do know that books (the majority in existence probably) aren’t meant to be sold or read by the general public but? Like historical ledgers, accident inquiries, patents, scientific findings, family trees, weather data?
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.
Yeah, they sit on shelves because the average person - at least in the U.S. - is steps away from brain death.
🤣
Popular doesnt always mean good. Unpopular doesnt always mean bad. There are countless little poetry books that only circulated through clubs. Texts circulated through writing groups that contain works of authors before they were famous.there are rare books you’ve never heard of that a collector would pay thousands for because they are one of the few people who know its value. Old folios that crossed oceans as the libraries behind them burned in petty wars that sat in attics for generations before the family found it only to send it up wholesale in an estate auction.
The point is that these assholes buy it all up by the truck load and process it indiscriminately. All to avoid copyright, and to feed their environment destroying hallucination machine.
You’re doing an awful lot of speculating. The texts circulating through clubs, are circulating. These books were not.
Do you have any idea how many books we casually destroy? Books that never got sold, that are just wasting space for the next new book. The only difference is that unsold books being burned for energy isn’t manking the news. It’s just another thursday
Actually im not. I deal with old books every day. What youre talking about is the modern publishing space where books get pulped by the millions because they are textbooks that weren’t picked up by enough schools. Or theyre no longer the latest edition. Even regular consumer books get pulled for not having enough sales.
The used market is still full of these books even after being abandoned by the publishers. But even that market is still driven by demand. Used bookstores only buy books if they think they’ll sell. But the thing is they still bulk sell those books that dont have market value because people will buy huge pallets of books for pennies on the dollar.
Yes libraries also recycle books that have been on the shelves too long. And it’s hard to sell old library books because of the extreme use they are put through. They do library sales for old books pretty regularly. Most of the time they are pulping books that are worn out. Which still suggests a demand, worn books are read books.
What they’re doing is taking old texts from warehouses that are known to be abandoned copyright, since stealing modern writing has proven to be unpopular. And so unknown old works are basically free game. And at best they are saving it digitally, which is good, but then selling access since after destroying the physical copy so as to have a monopoly on the data. And moatly theyre selling it to ai companies to use as training data. So basically theyre squatting old rare text that they have no actual right to.
Yeah, when I had a library close by I’d go all the time and find books I’d never heard of to read. It was great. Just because something doesn’t have a publicst pushing it on everyone doesn’t mean it’s not good or valuable. These ghouls destroying everything to feed their slop machine disgust me.
Yeah, small community literature is extremely valuable to historians of such communities.
Literally
1984Fahrenheit 451Looking at the temperature outside today, it’s a pleasure to burn
Yup, and we all have our tv feeds at home. I should reread that. I just remember that Montague was named after the pencil he used.
You have got to be fucking kidding me
You people have no idea how much I want AI banned all across everything. I don’t care about anything at this point. These people are EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL. Pure breed CRIMINALS
Fucking 90% of the books I read are “rare”
“Oh, but there’s SOME benefits to having AI”, says some person on the internet that had it shoved down their throat by their boss. No. Fuck you. Fuuuuuuck you all the way.
Fucking 90% of the books I read are “rare”
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]
i have a rare first edition that i absolutely treasure. single run, too. it’s a local therapist’s little comic book he drew.
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 someone took my copy and pulped it
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
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.
They are buying up used books at rates that push up the cost of used books.
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.
a book that might have otherwise become useful in the future
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.
Used books are practically free to begin with
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).
you want a specific used book, maybe you might have to spend ten to twenty to a thousand
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.
Show me the thousand dollar copy that an AI company destroyed and we can revisit this.
Now you’re just being argumentative. It’s destroyed. How can I do that?
What’s the point of destroying books after scanning them instead of reselling them apart from *hurr durr we are evil*?
you snip off the book and scan the binding
Easier to scan if you cut the binding off, and it costs money to re-bind a book you purchased for 10 cents as part of a lot.
Have you ever tried scanning a book? It’s a huge PITA.
They just cut the binding off so they can be run through a document feeder.
Do make sure that knowledge is only available through their model and otherwise lost to humanity.
Same with bombarding small websites until they give up and pull the plug.
Everything is fucked
Cause to easily scan them they remove the binding and rebinding is more work %han destroyibg so the point is capitalism
To keep their competitors from buying them and scanning them.
That seems to be the most likely reason. Bastards.
Sorry, but I did an oopsie. I watched the video linked, they destroy the books to scan them. It’s really sad. Though I’m sure they would destroy them anyway.
I assumed the process destroyed the book but keeping the contents from the competitors would definitely be seen as a business goal.
Copyright. They mustn’t make a copy. There is legal precedent that confirms it’s okay to transform the copy you bought into digital format. The Internet Archive relies a lot on that. I think they actually litigated it in the first place. So that’s why the copyright heads are going so absolutely apeshit. If no one’s charging you rent for using some data, then it’s “unethical”.
The Internet Archive absolutely does not destroy books. They scan them the hard way with the binding still intact.
I was misremembering. Google won the precedent, when they were suing over Google Books. IA had only 1 big lawsuit and were forced to settle. The non-destructive scanning is dicey.
I mean have you tried donating books? They just dump them into a storage room with thousands of other books donated that nobody wants.
To avoid competitors also scanning the book to get some kind of edge.
Fair use loophole, they claim they convert one physical book into one digital with no illicit copies, while also supporting the delusion of AI being an equivalent to a human reader. It is weird on so many levels but no one of noticeable weight asked them wtf.
That is not required by law. It is just easier to cut the bindings off. The other way is slow: https://archive.org/details/eliza-digitizing-book_202107
They’re pissing in the well so their competitors can’t access the same information.
Does anyone remember circa 2014 that radical jihadists in the middle east were destroying ancient and medieval artifacts, including stone heads? And I remember here in the liberal west we thought that was awful.
This is not the only thing that makes me think of that. Also Trump’s recent calls to reduce the size of US national parks and open them up to oil and uranium mining exploitation.
Yeah we remember. Because that’s a literal fucking warcrime. You’re not allowed to destroy historical sites.
While I agree that destroying books is bad - even common ones - it’s also not technically illegal. If I want to burn a first edition of whatever book worth thousands of dollars… I’m legally allowed to do that.
I can also see the benefit of having a digital version of a rare book that can be enjoyed by thousands as opposed to sitting on a shelf. But yeah, definitely hold companies accountable for destroying them. There has to be a better way to do that work and still have a useable book afterwards.
If they were archiving digital versions so they could be read by thousands in the future, this would be a totally different conversation.
They don’t even need to be as selfless as the internet archive - just follow Googles lead and allow people to search and view selections the archive, with automatic opening of the archive when you are confident copyright is expired. Even a closed archive owned by a third party with a dead mans switch to open it in the future when the business model is done would be something.
If they were archiving digital versions so they could be read by thousands in the future, this would be a totally different conversation.
Unfortunately that would be illegal.
The point of bookburning is that it would only be accessible to AI, bringing forth it’s monopoly on said first edition. No one would upload it to IA in the process. It is deleting one source of knowledge out of existence.
I don’t trust AI companies to not alter the texts of those books if there’s something in them that does not align with their worldview.
So any book added to the online archive(s) by these companies is suspect.Theyre actually destroying the book to be legal according to the article.
That is the justification and not the reason. Its faster and cheaper to cut the bindings, and they would have to store the books while they are using the digital copies to comply with copyright.
Random bulk rate books aren’t artifacts. The vast majority of them probably have a copy in Anna’s Archive.
If they did have a copy in Anna’s Archive, why the fuck would AI companies find physical copies, buy them, rip them apart, scan them, and then digitize them before destroying them?
Remember, you don’t get the digital copy. It’s only used to train their models.
Absolutely. Every AI company has Anna’s Archive in their training data already. They want to differentiate their models by having more training data than their competitors. There are way more books out there that have never been scanned than those that have.
OpenAI just settled out of court for $1.5 Billion perhaps some see this as a way to avoid that legal exposure. But IDK.
Then they aren’t rare books necessarily.
The use of the word “rare” implies that they are not bought in bulk…
Rare doesn’t necessarily mean culturally valuable. How many of these rare books are actually just old instruction manuals, travel guides, training materials, phone books, and dictionaries?
The issue with that is that we don’t yet know what is culturally valuable or not.
Just because we don’t see a need for the specific book now, doesn’t mean it won’t change tomorrow.
Which appears to be backed up by nothing.
Why are you so intent on riding big corpo cock? Do you think daddy Altman is going to praise you, call you his good girl?
You don’t actually need to play devil’s advocate, you know.
What is a rare book, exactly? Why can’t the publishers just print more if there is demand for them?
Maybe theyre from publishers that have since folded, and the original plates or print-copies are lost in some storage yard, or a tip face.
Keep in mind that books often become culturally important decades after their print run, sometimes when the copyright is ambiguous.
And also keep in mind there are technically, an insane number of “rare” books out there, but important rare books might only be important to people without the money to pay for another printing.
I could almost forgive this prrocess if they were /also/ archiving these books (leven if limited ike Google books does), but they won’t, because they are so focussed on staying ahead of compeditors based on the “knowledge” in their training data.
Well, I’d be surprised if they’re throwing away the digitized versions, they will want to use them in training all of their future models. If they go bankrupt maybe someone more willing to share will get the data
It depends on why the books is rare, some books are rare because they are not popular while other because they were banned. For example I know a novel were the English translation is easily available, but the original language is rare because it was banned in the original language in multiple countries. Don’t forget collecter artbooks that were never digitised.
Im assuming for pre digital era books, they don’t have the equipment (printing plate) anymore. But yes, presumably anybody could just print the scans with a modern printer?
Yes… If they were archiving their scans. Which isn’t happening.
I have this great book about all the glassware in use in 1940s chemistry.
As someone whose entire library is focused on the history of science: what’s the citation?
Lots of them are uninteresting and useless to 99.99% of people IIRC (examples I saw in a French article a few months ago was very precise history of some random villages in Spain or something similarly ultra specific)
When destroying books, we don’t actually know what will be important in the future. That’s why archivists spend so much time archiving mineutia without trying to curate. Those are different jobs and you can’t curate for the future.
Yeah I’m not saying these books are objectively uninteresting and useless and that they should be destroyed to feed some water-hungry plagiarism machine, but that is why they are not being re printed : barely anyone is buying them (despite them being rare)
That’s fucking evil.
Destroying the an endangered book feels like it should be criminal no?
As much as I think this behaviour is fucked up, once they buy the books it’s legally property of the company. And it can be destroyed without consequence since it’s legally property of the company.
That’s absolutely disgusting. At this rate, governments should really be stepping in and stopping all this.
According to the article, they are doing this to comply with copyright.
they are doing this to maliciously comply with copyright
Exactly, they don’t comply with any other law that might inconvenience them.
The whole point of post-enlightenment government is to serve the public good. But then it gets captured by capitalist interests (as Karl Marx explains in Das Kapital) at which point the government serves capital.
Issue is, the AI accelerationist cult has planned out every scenario, and they have a very good plan to amaze politicians. That’s why the bubble haven’t burst yet.
Good way to prepare for rewriting history to their liking. Shredding/destroying the books should be illegal in this regard.
The reason they are doing it this way is because it is illegal to not destroy the books if they ingest them. Skirting copyright laws.
Yeah, part of me thinks this is part of why they are desperate for these LLMs to take off.
Get everyone to trust it, then just manipulate it to saw whatever fascist lies they want as truth. Look at how Elon gets all pissy everytime Grok starts going to the left on its ideas.
To be fair, we don’t know what books those are, anyone can publish anything as a book these days. It doesn’t have to be good or even true. For example, Jordan Peterson shits out some books, and I personally would not mind if all copies were shredded and forgotten.
