345
Unredacted files reveal Anthropic’s ‘secret plan’ to ‘destructively scan all the books in the world'
(www.thebookseller.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
345 points (95.8% liked)
Technology
80479 readers
4638 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The fact that they destroyed the books is the most reprehensible thing to me. They could have resold or donated those books to libraries. Instead, they chose the ugliest and most wasteful thing they could possibly do. Despicable.
99.99999% of the time libraries don't want donated books. Honestly don't know if they ever want them (outside of genuinely rare/interesting ones, and even then). Their collections are usually meticulously curated and are basically the children of whomever is currently responsible for them. Libraries throw away books at a prodigious rate as they wear, or their circulation numbers drop, or because they just run out of space.
Honestly I have no real issue with people destroying (most) books. It's 2026 we have access to printers and presses, we can literally make more books on demand, and again for the V A S T majority of books that's more than good enough (again, not counting anything rare/valuable/interesting but also at that point they kinda cease to become just "books" as the value is more tied than the object itself than the text within)
What I have a massive issue with is them hoarding this information, and/or very, VERY, likely breaking any licensing the book may be under. And on top of that seemingly doing a fucking horrible job at actually creating something worthwhile from this massive waste of man-hours and resources.
It was physical books?
Well you don't "scan" a book that's already digital.
Oh. I do that every day