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274

AI companies are now destroying warehouses full of rare books (gardinerbryant.com)

submitted 20 hours ago by PerfectDark@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 63 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (2 children)

There's no legitimate purpose for destroying these books.

There are non-invasive ways scan books. But the destruction is an added bonus. These companies make a copy of these public domain books and then pulp the remains. They're rare, so that means they're hard to find (that's what rare means, after all).

Then, they can turn around and sell their dataset to AI companies.

The destruction is the point.

Capitalism always creates perverse incentives. The most profitable thing you can do is seize something readily available and make it impossible to get without paying you.

But which companies are doing this? It sounds like these are companies that supply training data to AI companies. I think we need names.

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

I misread that as:

The most profitable thing you can do is seize someone readily available [...]

... and realized that also tracks.

[–] kbobabob@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

They destroy them to comply with fair use laws. A judge in San Francisco ruled this practice as fair use.

[–] dil@lemmy.zip 3 points 14 hours ago

I think rare here may just mean misprints or something else rather than them destroying the one and only copy of books