this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books (www.news.com.au)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Artificial intelligence labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale.

ISBNdb notes that “print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination”.

“Millions of the most valuable books have never been digitised. They exist only in physical form, scattered across library shelves, used bookstores, and out-of-print catalogues. We get them to you at scale.”

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[–] wasabi_noir@lemmy.zip 5 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

I hope when the bubble bursts the cunts making these kinds of decisions are so distraught by their losses they resort to suicide.

[–] FireWire400@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I hate that I started to wish for the deaths of people I don't even know outside of news coverage, but that's what it takes unfortunately

[–] johntash@eviltoast.org 1 points 3 weeks ago

I assume most of them will get nice severance packages instead.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 3 weeks ago

thiel is already running away to argentina, he knows his Palantir ai is kinda cooked.

[–] bufalo1973@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago

The only real question is how long until 1929 comes again.