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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

#431

Post by jjulius »

radu_floricica wrote: post #391
nloomans wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a digital copy with the ability of doing millions of copies is stored somewhere somewhere were we can't access it. as the article states: “permanently locking human knowledge inside private corporate servers” the issue isn't that the physical copy is gone, it's that they are preventing people from making digital copies that are actually accessible by destroying the physical copies. > If you go to a recycling centre…

> somewhere were we can't access it By any metric imaginable, it's making the information more accessible, not less. First, it's taking a single copy of a 10k physical print and it's making it digital. Is it "locked"? Yes, by copyright laws, if you don't like that lobby to have them changed. But it's _closer_ to being widely available, not farther. Plus having the info part of a LLM makes it immediately available to…

>Plus having the info part of a LLM makes it immediately available to literally billions.

Help me understand how. Not only are these LLMs expressly prohibited from specifically regurgitating copyright works if the users asks them to, but they habitually hallucinate or paraphrase things wrong.

If they won't regurgitate the copyrighted text verbatim, and are known to be confidently incorrect and hallucinatory, I'm struggling to see how these texts are "immediately available to literally billions".

And I ask this as someone who has had LLMs give me incorrect assertions about the contents of books.

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

#432

Post by brookst »

ziyadb wrote: post #299

I was surprised to read that Anthropic (and probably other data / model companies) are doing this and it's extremely disappointing, as working towards the benefit of humanity is not an exclusive right / domain of theirs but rather, is a shared responsibility and mission carried by all of humanity itself as a collective responsibility. Thus, the preservation of this knowledge, its availability, and accessibility are t…

No, that’s the hyperbolic reaction clickbait wants from you.

Not all rare books are valuable. Someone’s self-published junk sitting in the garage is NOT analogous to the library of Alexandria.

Many, most, maybe all of these “rare” books are being scanned instead of just being recycled.

Not a big Reddit fan but there was a great post there from someone in the book industry talking about how non-industry people often give this great moral weight to ever book in a way that is totally disconnected from reality.

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

#433

Post by Goronmon »

ainiriand wrote: post #347
CamelCaseName wrote: post #319

You ask "Why destroy physical books?" I ask "Why save physical books?" If they are truly rare, then they are likely not valuable, otherwise there would be more copies or their contents could be found elsewhere. Owning and storing physical books is not free, there is a real cost. Even owning and storing the scans is not free, especially when IP rights and challenges get involved, since a scanned book with no distribut…

That's what state libraries are for, although I understand that sometimes is hard to wrap around the concept of using public money for something different than producing money.

Libraries tend to regularly destroy books as well. And they aren't scanning them first either.

Doesn't that make them even worse?

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

#434

Post by bmelton »

thesdev wrote: post #403
ziyadb wrote: post #299

I was surprised to read that Anthropic (and probably other data / model companies) are doing this and it's extremely disappointing, as working towards the benefit of humanity is not an exclusive right / domain of theirs but rather, is a shared responsibility and mission carried by all of humanity itself as a collective responsibility. Thus, the preservation of this knowledge, its availability, and accessibility are t…

> working towards the benefit of humanity is not an exclusive right / domain of theirs That's not their goal or else they wouldn't be burning books. Their goal is making money no matter the cost to the society.

If they were just chopping them up without scanning them first, then sure, but I think that scanning books and burning books are polar opposites

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

#435

Post by darkwater »

radu_floricica wrote: post #391
nloomans wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a digital copy with the ability of doing millions of copies is stored somewhere somewhere were we can't access it. as the article states: “permanently locking human knowledge inside private corporate servers” the issue isn't that the physical copy is gone, it's that they are preventing people from making digital copies that are actually accessible by destroying the physical copies. > If you go to a recycling centre…

> somewhere were we can't access it By any metric imaginable, it's making the information more accessible, not less. First, it's taking a single copy of a 10k physical print and it's making it digital. Is it "locked"? Yes, by copyright laws, if you don't like that lobby to have them changed. But it's _closer_ to being widely available, not farther. Plus having the info part of a LLM makes it immediately available to…

> Is it "locked"? Yes, by copyright laws,

> Plus having the info part of a LLM makes it immediately available to literally billions.

Isn't this a contradiction? I mean, maybe you can invoke a fair use policy if an LLM spits out some text from the scanned book, but then you are _not_ "making it available to literally billions".

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

#436

Post by snickerbockers »

Aurornis wrote: post #400
ziyadb wrote: post #299

I was surprised to read that Anthropic (and probably other data / model companies) are doing this and it's extremely disappointing, as working towards the benefit of humanity is not an exclusive right / domain of theirs but rather, is a shared responsibility and mission carried by all of humanity itself as a collective responsibility. Thus, the preservation of this knowledge, its availability, and accessibility are t…

> From a historical precedent standpoint, this is akin to the burning of the library of Alexandria, These comparisons are starting to get ridiculous. Why are so many people assuming there is exactly one copy of all of these important books available, that it’s sitting in the warehouse of a bulk book reseller, and that Anthropic is destroying the lone copy? Your local library throws out books every year and nobody tho…

>Why are so many people assuming there is exactly one copy of all of these important books available, and that Anthropic is destroying the lone copy?

Why are you assuming that each book gets scanned exactly one time and then never again? And why are you assuming that out-of-print books remain easily accessible so long as not every copy has been destroyed?

>Your local library throws out books every year and nobody thought twice about it.

When they're damaged beyond hope of repair from decades of wear. As for books that haven't fallen apart from being used as intended and merely are no longer desired, my local library generally sells them off at bargain prices. Of course I can't speak to your local library.

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

#437

Post by TofuLover »

himinlomax wrote: post #426
ziyadb wrote: post #299

I was surprised to read that Anthropic (and probably other data / model companies) are doing this and it's extremely disappointing, as working towards the benefit of humanity is not an exclusive right / domain of theirs but rather, is a shared responsibility and mission carried by all of humanity itself as a collective responsibility. Thus, the preservation of this knowledge, its availability, and accessibility are t…

They're not destroying rare manuscripts or incunables. They're destroying one (1) copy of a mass-produced item for each AI company. Public libraries destroy millions more yearly as a matter of routine. This is just part of a CCP-aligned moral panic, along with the water use nonsense, and similar with the soviet-aligned moral panic that destroyed the civil nuclear industry 40 years ago.

> This is just part of a CCP-aligned moral panic, along with the water use nonsense

What was nonsense about water use?

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

#438

Post by zero-sharp »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #319

You ask "Why destroy physical books?" I ask "Why save physical books?" If they are truly rare, then they are likely not valuable, otherwise there would be more copies or their contents could be found elsewhere. Owning and storing physical books is not free, there is a real cost. Even owning and storing the scans is not free, especially when IP rights and challenges get involved, since a scanned book with no distribut…

>If they are truly rare, then they are likely not valuable,

Sometimes I don't even know how to respond to comments here. I don't want to be rude, but you just have to give this a moment of thought. Is all the media that you find valuable common? I know that's not the case for me based on my own experience.

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

#439

Post by darkwater »

gnfargbl wrote: post #399
nloomans wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a digital copy with the ability of doing millions of copies is stored somewhere somewhere were we can't access it. as the article states: “permanently locking human knowledge inside private corporate servers” the issue isn't that the physical copy is gone, it's that they are preventing people from making digital copies that are actually accessible by destroying the physical copies. > If you go to a recycling centre…

> permanently locking human knowledge inside private corporate servers History tells us that very few "permanent" situations are truly permanent. Provided a set of information has value (which in this case it clearly does) then the overwhelming likelihood is that, eventually, through some method or other, the information will become public.

> History tells us that very few "permanent" situations are truly permanent.

If you destroy the only copy of a physical artifact, the situation is as permanent as it can get.

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

#440

Post by brookst »

leonidasrup wrote: post #382
ziyadb wrote: post #299

I was surprised to read that Anthropic (and probably other data / model companies) are doing this and it's extremely disappointing, as working towards the benefit of humanity is not an exclusive right / domain of theirs but rather, is a shared responsibility and mission carried by all of humanity itself as a collective responsibility. Thus, the preservation of this knowledge, its availability, and accessibility are t…

A small change in the copyright law would fix this problem. Something like: If a company is scanning material protected by copyright, it has to send a digital copy of the scanned material to Library of Congress within 5 working days.

Wait, so the library of congress is suddenly responsible for probably petabytes a day of incoming scans? To what end? Do they have to index it and make it available? Do they have to check the accuracy and integrity of the scans?

How does this help anything, except create more work to throw in the trash?

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