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AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

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Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#51

Post by Levitz »

tptacek wrote: post #31

These stories are weird, because actual professional specialized book dealers pulp books by the millions . People keep pointing out, and it doesn't seem to sink in, that model trainers only have use for a single copy of a book. Even if they were literally burning these books to spite you, they'd be destroying an infinitesimal fraction of the books the book trade already destroys. It is not natural in the industry to…

The outraged people don't care. They hate AI, and so anything surrounding AI that can be evil is evil. Books are good, AI destroys books, AI is bad.

Furthermore, they like that AI is bad. Because they think it's bad, and being right feels good.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#52

Post by tptacek »

runarberg wrote: post #29
tptacek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To do what?

To not destroy rare books.

When you read "rare books", what are you thinking these are? The 404 article that spun this story up goes into more detail. These are like vanity press books. They're rare because nobody cares about them. The book industry already destroys these books.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#53

Post by tptacek »

Levitz wrote: post #51
tptacek wrote: post #31

These stories are weird, because actual professional specialized book dealers pulp books by the millions . People keep pointing out, and it doesn't seem to sink in, that model trainers only have use for a single copy of a book. Even if they were literally burning these books to spite you, they'd be destroying an infinitesimal fraction of the books the book trade already destroys. It is not natural in the industry to…

The outraged people don't care. They hate AI, and so anything surrounding AI that can be evil is evil. Books are good, AI destroys books, AI is bad. Furthermore, they like that AI is bad. Because they think it's bad, and being right feels good .

I think people genuinely don't get that book destruction is like a pretty natural part of the book lifecycle.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#54

Post by eru »

tptacek wrote: post #31

These stories are weird, because actual professional specialized book dealers pulp books by the millions . People keep pointing out, and it doesn't seem to sink in, that model trainers only have use for a single copy of a book. Even if they were literally burning these books to spite you, they'd be destroying an infinitesimal fraction of the books the book trade already destroys. It is not natural in the industry to…

And the solution to the water issues can be found in any introductory textbook on the subject: a water price.

> People keep pointing out, and it doesn't seem to sink in, that model trainers only have use for a single copy of a book.

Please pardon the tangent: that's what always bothered me about the Borg in Star Trek. Why do they need to assimilate whole species? I'm sure there are enough volunteers in the federation that would join the Borg collective. Even a handful should be enough.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#56

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

breezybottom wrote: post #16
alightsoul wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ai companies don't use ebooks, because they are more expensive than second hand books

They absolutely do. Meta torrented 81 terabytes of ebooks. They just have no incentive to pay when the law looks the other way.

The entire ironic thing here is that a huge part of those 81 terabytes of ebooks that Meta torrented were directly pirated books from Anna's Archive.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#57

Post by eru »

landgenoot wrote: post #17

Isn't this a matter of regulation? I'm not sure about US, but in EU you have old houses/buildings that are protected. Sure, you can buy them, but you can't modify or destroy them (being cultural heritage).

Most old books aren't worth protecting, and the publishing industry destroys oodles of them as waste that no one wants.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#58

Post by ColdStream »

The question I have is, do these companies keep copies of the scans after they have finished training on them? If so, then it isn't the worst outcome. Not great but at least the information is not completely destroyed forever just the original physical being of it.

Deeper thought however, eventually this will all be lost to time and I suspect that about 99% of all printed materials probably would never be read again simply due to the huge volume of it and sheer obscurity. Ernest Becker and his work 'The Denial of Death' might have some thoughts on this.

go to any second hand book store and just pick out something at random from the 1950's for instance, something about pottery or bird watching or whatever. The history of Bisbee Arizona, I don't know. Look up the author, see if they even left a trace of their work and the vast majority of the time they have already been forgotten to the great void of the universe. In the end, it all goes away. Clinging only creates pain.

I'm not saying that we should let them just do this, I am just saying that long term it is a tough battle to fight only to lose the war.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#59

Post by Levitz »

HedonicEscal8r wrote: post #11

The piracy organizations are playing 4D chess while everyone else is playing checkers. The irony of this entire situation - AI companies being legally required to shred books due to kafkaesque copyright laws, then used as a marketing tactic by Anna's Archive - is a work of art. I support Anna's Archive, by the way. Information wants to be free.

It's an excellent play by them, using moral outrage to the benefit of the project. When life gives you lemons...

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#60

Post by enraged_camel »

RajT88 wrote: post #14
ezfe wrote: post #2

I dislike these AI companies but let's be clear here: the copyright holders are the ones locking these books up. If they don't want to print more copies, then they could release the copyright on them. Instead, they enforce the copyright and force AI companies to shred books they want to ingest. edit: Also, an AI company would only ever care to purchase, scan, destroy a book once. Presumably many books have more than…

The articles I've read on this are not clear, but I strongly suspect "rare" is not the definition you and I probably use for the level of rarity of books actually being destroyed. These are not going to be the kinds of books "The Ninth Gate" resolved around - truly one of a kind. It's not good they are destroying books, but they are books which do have other copies. Just perhaps not many.

Also, a lot of these "rare books" are stuff like TV programming magazines from October 1994.
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