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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

#881

Post by smallerize »

1234letshaveatw wrote: post #678
smallerize wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if you're appealing to librarians: "Hey, guys, when the librarians get pissed about the destruction of books, it’s time to put those listening ears on. Because we are very comfortable with the idea that books are tools that can be retired. What’s happening right now is not that...." https://bsky.app/profile/annabookwriter.bsky.social/post/3mt...

I'm not a bsky person so I didn't click though but library books aren't "retired" to a farm upstate. My SO works at a library, they are mostly shredded. This is a nothingburger

I made sure the thread was public before I posted it here. It ends "Fuck, I have destroyed MY OWN books. I’m not overly precious here.

What Amazon is doing is vile."

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

#882

Post by JohnFen »

brainwad wrote: post #687
JohnFen wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let us not forget they own the books. That's rather beside the point. I don't think anyone is arguing that what they're doing is in some way illegal. > no modern book I'm less concerned about modern books.

All the books being destroyed are modern enough to have deposited copies, or they wouldn't be still under copyright. The destruction is happening to satisfy judges that no illegal copying is happening, only a transformation of medium.

All the reports I hear is that they're doing this with all books, not just ones still under copyright.

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

#883

Post by init1 »

One of the worst articles of all time. AI companies buy old books that would be rotting on a shelf with nobody reading them. They are required by law to destroy the book as part of the scanning process. This book was not being read anyway and now it's digitized. I.e. preserved forever.

I get you want to be mad at them. Be mad at them for real reasons like increasing ram prices or using the public grid to socialize their costs.

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

#885

Post by eru »

asdfsa32 wrote: post #276
eru wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever you build a highway or a bridge or a power plant, your engineers have to put a money value on human life, or at least the worth of a statistical human life. Just to make ordinary engineering decisions. And refusing to do this exercise just means that you behave as-if you put a really silly number on the value of human life, and probably not consistent between different parts of the project. So I don't quite…

I am well aware of the Statistical Value of Life and how it impacts projects. But that is generally used for allocating preventative measures. No road is going to get approved if it is going to result in random deaths by design.

Roads with cars on it do result in random deaths. The preventative measures only prevent deaths that the road itself caused.

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

#886

Post by Cider9986 »

ErigmolCt wrote: post #202

A genuinely useful project would identify publications that are actually rare, poorly catalogued, or held by only a few libraries, then prioritize those for careful preservation

https://annas-archive.gl/isbn-visualization

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

#887

Post by Cider9986 »

JsonDemWitOster wrote: post #420

Sorry for the copy-paste from elsewhere. I'm probably doxxing my online accounts with this. 100% my words tho and 100% I stand by this. Really can't wait for this outrage cycle to finally die. There's a lot AI companies are doing wrong. The wording of Project Panama is really some villain-type shit. But if you stop and think about it, this is really not concerning. Like, at all. 0. In the Anglosphere, the British Lib…

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22It%27s+not+like+Anthropic...

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

#888

Post by parineum »

freejazz wrote: post #636
parineum wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they hadn't been sued for pirating so many books yet.

Well its not like copyright was invented last year...

They was a really good chance they wouldn't have gotten caught before when LLMs were less successful. It was their success that got them caught. Now, if they continued pirating, they'd definitely get caught and the judgements against them would reflect their repeated transgressions.

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

#889

Post by runarberg »

dukeyukey wrote: post #872
runarberg wrote: post #797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scale matters. It is disingenuous to just remove it from the equation as if it doesn’t. As does the intention matter. The AI companies are doing this because they want to profit off of it. They don’t have to do this, and the fact that they do is part of what makes them bad for humanity.

AI companies are doing this at a far lesser scale than libraries are, are you implying doing it less is worse?

I am going to have to see the numbers involved before I believe this. But even if it is true, it is still not a comparable behavior as I have argued above.

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

#890

Post by pfdietz »

himinlomax wrote: post #853
pfdietz wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear in the US was killed by Russian natural gas money? What other nonsense do you believe?

It demonstrably was in Germany. Look up Greenpeace Energy, and what cushy corporate job Schroder got after leaving office.

Also, you said "40 year ago". But that was well before nuclear was shut down in Germany.

Lying is difficult since you don't have reality to keep your story straight.

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