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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

#791

Post by quietsegfault »

afpx wrote: post #402
cladopa wrote: post #343

It is not a big deal. Since the invention of the printing press any important book has been duplicated by thousands, tens of thousands or even million of units. Just taking one of those and "destroying them"(it is not destroyed, a digital copy with the ability of doing millions of copies is stored somewhere) is not problematic for Humanity. By the way, I always search for second hand books. Most of the books there ar…

I think you may be greatly underestimating the long tail. Several times a year I read sources that reference older books that I can't find online. When I am able to locate them, they often cost at least several hundred dollars, sometimes into the 10s of thousands.

Do you think that you are somehow special and unique in needing these books? If the books cost in the 10s of thousands, then there's obviously value to other people. I've seen no evidence that Amazon or others are buying $10k books to scan into their corpus. All evidence I've seen is that they're scanning cheap books with no current value and no clear use to people today.

I have volunteered with a library, and probably threw hundreds of books over a couple week engagement from a university library into a shredder at the direction of a professional, academic librarian. Libraries are constantly culling books, the EXACT category books we're talking about here (old, never-read). This is happening at a much larger scale, so I would recommend railing against university librarians in addition to the AI juggernauts.

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

#792

Post by tptacek »

runarberg wrote: post #713
dukeyukey wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rare and valuable books are not going to be in the giant pallets AI companies are buying. Most public libraries do not have professional archivists or anything like that, not so charity shops, or booksellers.

No, but they are going to be intermixed in boxes from an old estate, or a used books store which is closing up, etc. > Most public libraries do not have professional archivists Most reasonably sized library systems do in fact. Even small ones have trained librarians with an some degree in library science who took at least an introductory class in archiving as a part of their degree, and very likely has some idea how…

Right, and what happens to those boxes from old estates are that they get put into dumpsters. The only difference here are:

* It's happening on a much smaller scale

* They're actually digitizing the books before they destroy them

This obviously isn't about the books. It's about people want reasons not to like AI companies.

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

#793

Post by quietsegfault »

pibaker wrote: post #727
cladopa wrote: post #343

It is not a big deal. Since the invention of the printing press any important book has been duplicated by thousands, tens of thousands or even million of units. Just taking one of those and "destroying them"(it is not destroyed, a digital copy with the ability of doing millions of copies is stored somewhere) is not problematic for Humanity. By the way, I always search for second hand books. Most of the books there ar…

> any important book has been duplicated by thousands, tens of thousands or even million of units. It is common for academic books to have publication runs in the low three digits. You may argue these books are not important. But how do we know if we fail to preserve it?

Is there evidence that these mythical low-print-run books are being purchased by Amazon and friends for destructive scanning?

I simply don't see why railing against the AI giants about this without also contributing significant effort into protecting these low-print-run books from getting jettisoned by university libraries makes any sense.

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

#794

Post by quietsegfault »

shiandow wrote: post #373
cladopa wrote: post #343

It is not a big deal. Since the invention of the printing press any important book has been duplicated by thousands, tens of thousands or even million of units. Just taking one of those and "destroying them"(it is not destroyed, a digital copy with the ability of doing millions of copies is stored somewhere) is not problematic for Humanity. By the way, I always search for second hand books. Most of the books there ar…

Somehow I don't think they're looking for the books that have been copied over and over.

Why do you think that? Do you have evidence, or is this just a hunch? Why would Amazon waste money on uber rare books when there are thousands and thousands of not-so-rare books that could serve the exact same purpose?

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

#795

Post by runarberg »

tptacek wrote: post #737
runarberg wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bad comparison. Public libraries are trying their best to preserve rare copies, despite being overwhelmed and underfunded. If they come across a rare copy chances are it will be preserved. When an AI company comes across a rare book, it will not recognize it as such. There is also a fundamental difference in intention. AI companies are seeking out old books and will destroy them. Public libraries are trying…

What comparison? I'm talking about libraries as they actually exist and you're talking about what you think libraries should be doing. I'm arguing positively, and you're arguing normatively. I'm not "anti-academic". I'm just very involved in my local community and I read the annual reports from our library system. We accept book donations, like a lot of suburban library systems do (from our extremely book-y community…

You were the one who brought public libraries into this conversation, in an attempt to legitimize this practice by AI companies. I assumed this attempt was you saying the two behaviors are comparable.

I pushed back on that comparison. These behaviors are in fact not comparable. What the AI companies are doing is bad actually, and what libraries are doing is, while unfortunate, acceptable, given the limited resources they have.

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

#796

Post by quietsegfault »

rvz wrote: post #395
cladopa wrote: post #343

It is not a big deal. Since the invention of the printing press any important book has been duplicated by thousands, tens of thousands or even million of units. Just taking one of those and "destroying them"(it is not destroyed, a digital copy with the ability of doing millions of copies is stored somewhere) is not problematic for Humanity. By the way, I always search for second hand books. Most of the books there ar…

First of all, it IS destroyed and it is a big deal. Hardcover copies of books especially 1st - 2nd edition ones (even with mistakes) are rarer than digital scans. Maybe the Bodleian Library at Oxford University should give all their rare books to AI companies to scan and destroy them since it is not a "big deal" anyway. Except that when they did do a pilot with OpenAI to scan these rare books, [0] they did NOT destro…

Why is it a big deal?

Do you think there's no difference between the books curated at Oxford University and the crap that Amazon is buying?

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

#797

Post by runarberg »

tptacek wrote: post #792
runarberg wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but they are going to be intermixed in boxes from an old estate, or a used books store which is closing up, etc. > Most public libraries do not have professional archivists Most reasonably sized library systems do in fact. Even small ones have trained librarians with an some degree in library science who took at least an introductory class in archiving as a part of their degree, and very likely has some idea how…

Right, and what happens to those boxes from old estates are that they get put into dumpsters. The only difference here are: * It's happening on a much smaller scale * They're actually digitizing the books before they destroy them This obviously isn't about the books. It's about people want reasons not to like AI companies.

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.

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

#798

Post by tptacek »

runarberg wrote: post #797
tptacek wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and what happens to those boxes from old estates are that they get put into dumpsters. The only difference here are: * It's happening on a much smaller scale * They're actually digitizing the books before they destroy them This obviously isn't about the books. It's about people want reasons not to like AI companies.

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.

Right: the scale matters, which is why it's very weird to take AI companies to task for something the public library system does on a far greater scale. And, in fact, the AI companies do have to do this: they're required by law to destroy these books.

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

#799

Post by tptacek »

runarberg wrote: post #795
tptacek wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What comparison? I'm talking about libraries as they actually exist and you're talking about what you think libraries should be doing. I'm arguing positively, and you're arguing normatively. I'm not "anti-academic". I'm just very involved in my local community and I read the annual reports from our library system. We accept book donations, like a lot of suburban library systems do (from our extremely book-y community…

You were the one who brought public libraries into this conversation, in an attempt to legitimize this practice by AI companies. I assumed this attempt was you saying the two behaviors are comparable. I pushed back on that comparison. These behaviors are in fact not comparable. What the AI companies are doing is bad actually, and what libraries are doing is, while unfortunate, acceptable, given the limited resources…

Yes, I brought public libraries into this conversation, because they daily destroy hundreds of thousands of books, most of them without any professional evaluation whatsoever. I don't have a problem with this, because I understand a little how the book trade works, and whatever romantic idea people have about the preservation of books, it has little to do with what books actually are.

What I don't understand is your response to this. An AI company digitizes a book before destroying it: "bad actually". A public library takes a cartload of books to a dumpster without so much as opening the front cover of any of the books: just fine.

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

#800

Post by quietsegfault »

wasmperson wrote: post #751
pshirshov wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read more about this. Depends on the definition of the "big deal" but from what I can understand the problem is that they buy rare things - which exist in just several copies - and they tend to buy _all_ copies.

I was also skeptical of this claim but managed to find someone who explains it: https://downtownbrown.substack.com/p/five-fallacies-ai-and-d... It's not that individual companies buy all copies of a given book, but that there's more than one book scanning company, and they aren't sharing the scans with each other. The result: books that were rare but nevertheless easy to find for purchase (thanks to the internet) are…

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