Speaking Of Selling Books - August 19 CBS News Report - AI Buying Books to Scan & Destroy
Summary: The discussion revolves around a CBS news report about AI companies purchasing books in bulk for scanning and destroying after digitization. intimewithmusic raises concerns about the implications of this practice on the preservation and integrity of the original content. Other participants, such as john_koenig99 and reallynicestamps, compare this to efforts by projects like the Gutenberg Archive, highlighting the difference in approach regarding preservation. lotzofuniquegoodies and fergua3 express concerns about the cultural and informational impacts, fearing loss and misrepresentation of literary works. The discussion touches on the broader implications of AI manipulation of content and how it could affect the future of literature and information accessibility.
Hi Folks.
I'm wondering what you think about yesterdays CBS news report about the AI companies buying up used books in bulk to scan, train AI and then destroy.
Here's the link. I highly recommend you read the expressive comments below the video that share a wide variety of opinions.
Do you think the trend will spread to other scanable ephemera?
Thanks!
Running time = 5 min
"AI companies buying books to scan and destroy, 404 Media investigation finds"
https://youtu.be/7u1FZzhp5aw?si=V2HmPzxNBIzWdA6v
fergua3
·4 days agoi first heard about this several weeks ago. They rip the books apart to separate the pages because it is much faster to scan them that way. The real problem is that sometimes this happens to very rare books and even on occasion one of a kind books. Between conservative trends around the world to get rid of certain books and AI consuming them it makes for a bit of an uncertain future where information will be in fewer and fewer hands potentially....
intimewithmusic
OP4 days ago · EditedIt was Amazon doing this that 1st caught my attention but the activity is growing.
"Anthropic: Public court documents from copyright lawsuits revealed Anthropic's "Project Panama," which planned to scan between 500,000 and 2 million books using destructive scanning (slicing off spines and shredding pages after high-speed scanning).
Meta: Investigative reports indicate that Meta has also acquired physical books in-house for large language modelAnthropic: Public court documents from copyright lawsuits revealed Anthropic's "Project Panama," which planned to scan between 500,000 and 2 million books using destructive scanning (slicing off spines and shredding pages after high-speed scanning).Meta: Investigative reports indicate that Meta has also acquired physical books in-house for large language model training.
As well subcontractors have been enlisted to carry out the practice. Zoom Books, Far Corner, Last Token, and Innodata—have shifted into providing specialized book sourcing and destructive scanning preparation services for AI developers."
visual-sound
·5 days agoIn the future, owning books will be a status symbol!
lotzofuniquegoodies
·2 weeks ago@intimewithmusic
Scary concept!! Reminds me of those episodes of Storage Wars where they are tossing around the contents of a locker with no concern for unknown treasures inside a box. (Destroy so stuff doesn't get repurposed.) The other hidden consequence is making this data "easily available" for anyone to pilfer for whatever purposes they so choose. Remember when you had to READ the book to do the book report?
Mind you...I am old fashion. I actually miss reading a physical newspaper!!
intimewithmusic
OP2 weeks ago · Edited@lotzofuniquegoodies I've mentioned I'm an L. Frank Baum fan. He wrote "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" in 1900. There never was a book called "The Wizard Of Oz" just the movie with it's name shortened long after Baum died. Baum wrote 14 books in total about OZ. The fourth one was "Dorothy And The Wizard In OZ" in 1908. Why is this relevant?
@reallynicestamps was kind enough to bring up the important tasks carried out by Project Gutenberg. Here is what that group has to say about "Dorothy And The Wizard In Oz".
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The 1930s 2nd editions in reasonable condition sell around $150 each. The first editions are in the thousands. Due to popularity there were a lot printed however as childrens books most of the true 1st and 2nd editions of all 14 books are in poor shape. Who didn't like to color wax crayon all over the color plates? The books even had a square in an opening leaf for the child's name. I love that part in the copies I've collected.
That being said we can guess what will happen to Baum's stories once AI spews altered versions around the globe...
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"AI, make all of the villains into good guys and all the good guys into villains."
AI " Certainly. I can for sure do that for you. How's this?"
Dorothy will murder both Aunt Em and Uncle Henry with a hay baler. After their house lands on the wicked witch of the East Dorothy will resussitate her. The two then make Toto into tacos for lunch. After getting stoned on fentanyl they kill all the Munkins, throw the Tin Man in the river, burn the Scarecrow and finally they feed Glinda to the Cowardly Lion.
AI "Because the Wizard was neither good nor bad I've left him out of the story."
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Just think what could be done with "eBay For Dummies" by Marsha Collier!
I'm thinkin' science fiction novel....
reallynicestamps
·2 weeks agoThe Gutenberg Archive has been copying books for many years now, and there are presses that have published facsimile editions of out of print titles. I've offered and sold some myself.
But both are careful to keep the originals in as good condition as possible.
It's the wanton destruction, in order to copy (and steal) the original text that is the sticking point.
Remembering that "rare" does not mean commercially valuable, nor does "old".
intimewithmusic
OP2 weeks agoYes, that's a good point. I'm familiar with that project. There's also the value of audio copies being made from the complete volumes of books in the public realm made by companies like Libravox. These are very important for non readers, the blind and their ability to be easily translated.
Another "coincidence" with Amazon owning both Abe and Audible.
john_koenig99
·2 weeks agoThe note indicates that the order of the events you mentioned is backwards. They buy the books, then DESTROY them (i.e., take the spine of the books to get the pages loose), and then SCAN the loose pages, in order to make the process more efficient.
Regardless, it's very sad that this is happening, but, TBH, many old books get damaged by mold, water, fire, etc. due to careless handling or accidents, so at least the information in these particular books is being preserved (somehow).
intimewithmusic
OP2 weeks ago · EditedAs stated in the news release the contents of the books are stripped apart for scanning. After digitization they're summarized (altered) by AI, abridged, rearranged, misconstrued and the result is distributed to suit the needs of AI. The book in it's entirety is gone forever. Unless the AI company's mandate includes making it available as a complete volume I don't see that's any sort of "preservation".
It's interesting one of the AI giants doing this is Amazon who also owns Abe Books. What if the company purchases all copies of selected books?
So many sides to this. Suppose a contractor in Canada purchases millions of used books in Canada and completes the digitization here. Following that they send the data to the AI company in the USA.
What are the tariffs?