Submitted 9 hours ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
People who are okay with this are absolutely disgusting. Some shitty AI company wastes a fuckton of our collective resources resources to build and run their AI data centers, and if that wasn’t bad enough they generate a fuckton of excess waste to train the goddamn thing. Fuck capitalism.
I assume “destructively scan” means to cut the spine off so they lie flat, and that one copy of each book will be scanned? Isn’t that a pretty normal way of doing it in cases where the prints aren’t rare?
Probably, yes. I think there’s a copyright reason behind destroying the book?
Not copyright, as much as if the book isn’t precious, it’s easier to do that, feed the loose pages into the scanner, and then get an intact one if you want it, compared to the additional expense of having to build and program a machine to carefully turn the pages and photograph what’s inside, or the time it would need by comparison.
It just doesn’t work if the spine is still there.
Or throw the book into a shredder connected to a scanner that combines the page puzzle internally.
Yes, but I don’t think they’re checking what they’re ingesting super hard, especially at those volumes.
Is this an opportunity to self-publish my own book for $100k per copy and be guaranteed one sale?
Unless they buy returned books for pennies
Or books retired from libraries (saw many stamps on scans on 70s books from internet archive that implied disposal from some American library)
No they will simply steal it, like they usually do.
How about 5000 $200 books written by their own AI (preferably for free, cheapest printing in existence) ?
Just don’t write it in any OS that backs up your stuff…you know…for safe keeping…
Anthropic has a cloud service?
Article is not available without registering. As for the title, “destructive” book scanning means you cut off the binding and put the pages in a scanner which easily flips through them and takes the pictures. If you’re not scanning rare old books, this is a perfectly reasonable way to do it, because setting up a scanner for a normal book and manually turning each page to scan it takes a long time (Internet Archive has videos on how they do it, very nice and impressive, and logical since their original mission was scanning old public domain stuff, i.e. published before 1930 or so). If Anthropic will actually legally buy all those thousands upon thousands of books, that will be a pleasant precedent for an AI company.
Although I very much doubt that random uncritically gathered textual material can “teach their AI tool how to write well”. They’re still pushing for more and more training data, even though it’s clear actual advancement will have to happen (if it can happen) through more refined usage of / training on the data.
Still creating shitloads of trash.
I imagine they could rebind those books and resell them. Maybe some employees got lucky and get all these “scraps”?
Write a book where the spine is a required piece of the story for its understanding or completion.
Kind of like how House of Leaves is best enjoyed with the actual book.
I read one once where being able to slightly see through the pages was a key part of the plot
Which one, if you can recall? I love interactive books.
I swore I wouldn’t buy another physical book, but I may break it just to be able to read this one.
I love reading actual books. I don’t know why you would quit if you can afford it
It’s a worthy story. Lots of little Easter eggs.
When a bookstore goes out of business or just can’t sell a book, they don’t return it to the printers, they tear off the cover, return that and by law have to throw the rest of the book in the trash and destroy it. So books are already destroyed by the millions. If they were destroying ancient texts or valuable copies, that would be more something to get excited about. I doubt that they were doing that though.
Yeah that’s exactly it. James Patterson, for example, has written dozens of books, and there are billions of his books alone. They’re taking one of each, cutting off the binding, and scanning the pages. This is standard procedure for common books.
So why don’t they want people knowing about it? Because a lot of people are anti-AI and will run misleading stories like this.
I’m as anti-AI as the next guy, but unlike other companies scraping all of reddit and stealing art off the Internet, these guys are doing it mostly properly by paying for the books. They still don’t have a license to use the material in this manner, though.
They don’t need a license to use material in this way under extant US law. Copyright is overwhelmingly about reproduction rather than consumption.
That much was absolutely is something to get worked up about. Just because it happens more than people realize, that doesn’t make it okay.
Words and ideas don’t become sacred when they are committed to paper. Unless they destroyed the last copy of something that has not been digitized, this is totally fine.
I don’t mind if they destroy 10k copies of Fabio’s books. It’s probably not even half of the print run so for a thing, it’s guaranteed to be no harm because there’s enough copies around.
But when you say destroy ALL books, you’re also talking about rare first edition of whatever Shakespeare did, and manuscripts of Beethoven, and authors that I am fond of but I have no chance to buy used or new, or find in a library, because it’s not popular and/or is in a language that is not from the place I live. And that’s not cool.
So first things first, no single entity can have access to all books. Not even reputable historians would get access to anything they just ask around. Then there’s books that have few copies and no one has any clue where they are. Etc etc.
“Rainbows End”?
Bingo. You’ve nailed it.
I’m a bit amused that the original author’s post in plain text is used instead of a picture.
Pointless anti ai propaganda.
Tamara left you to find someone who IS anti-AI.
Good.
^ Pointless AI propaganda
That’s a really great observation! Let’s dive into that.
“…plans in early 2024 to scan “all the books in the world” to teach their AI tool “how to write well”.“ — That’s like teaching a writing course by only reading.
What are they? The giant brains from Futurama? Are they building an infosphere?
Wispy2891@lemmy.world 19 minutes ago
It’s not secret, it was their defence when they got sued for copyright infringement. Instead of download all the books from Anna’s archive like meta, they buy a copy, cut the binding, scan it, then destroy it. “We bought a copy for personal use then use the content for profit, it’s not piracy”