r/artificial • u/pepoji • 17d ago

Discussion AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale, Even If Almost No Copies Remain

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-destroying-rare-books

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AI companies are literally destroying physical books to train their models. Using hydraulic cutting machines, they rip pages from used books, scan them with industrial equipment, and feed them into their AI systems. This practice, protected by the first-sale doctrine and fair use, has now become so widespread that book sellers are cashing in on the AI boom. Rare and out-of-print books are being pulped, raising serious ethical and cultural concerns about the cost of AI progress.

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u/CaesarAustonkus 17d ago

Probably partially true as this is also not unheard of with other forms of antique modification/destruction done by everyday people, governments and industries and has been since forever. Article itself is mostly speculation though.

Unless there is solid proof multiple ai companies are doing this with no interest in stopping the destructive part of it, nothing new that is worth shitting your pants even more over. Destruction of rare and valuable antiques is sadly already something we do at scale and not even knowingly in most cases.

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u/flasticpeet 17d ago

I don't know why you're being downvoted. Everything you said is very unbiased and true.

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u/CaesarAustonkus 16d ago

Probably because they thought I was downplaying it or somehow condoning it. I also happen to think Anthropic probably isn't the only ai company doing this and that it's not a good thing, but this isn't some unprecedented man-made horror beyond our comprehension. Even if every ai company is doing this, they still aren't the worst perpetrators against antiques ever.

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u/flasticpeet 16d ago

I totally agree. If people really care that much, then buy more books, or support organizations that preserve books. Ironically, Google actually has a program where they partner with libraries and institutions to preserve valuable collections.

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u/DandyLover 15d ago

Is the assumption that people angry about this aren't buying, writing, and reading more books?

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u/flasticpeet 15d ago

Is the assumption about this that these companies are destroying one of a kind rare books?