cross-posted from: https://kbin.earth/m/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com/t/3120649

As AI tech companies increasingly buy and destroy books to feed to their AI models, Anna’s Archive is calling for volunteers to help preserve them for the public record.

  • pseudo@jlai.lu
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    9 hours ago

    AI training is distroying books

    Every time I hear that claim it sounds weird to me. You can’t say that without an explanation.

    Sure, scanning a print copy can mean distroying it but a book as a work still exist. We are very far from having scanned every books which physical copy are numerous. If AI trains on every romance novel published in the 80’s, it is far from distroying books by distroying physical copy.

    Now if AI company are searching for rare books to scan and distroy, it is much more worrying but finding rare editions or print copies of books is a trade and the normal citizen can’t jumps in to save the day.

    • Test_Tickles@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      They are literally searching for rare books, paying premium costs for them, then cutting off their spines because it is faster to scan them that way.
      Not only do they not need to destroy the books to scan them, but Google already did this 2 decades ago, and they did it non-destructively.

      • dil@lemmy.zip
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        3 hours ago

        they arent paying extra, they are buying books planned for destruction anyways?

        • Test_Tickles@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          Independent bookstores all across Europe are seeing a trend like this, where they receive random, relatively large orders that are shipped to local addresses. While orders like these still come through in the digital age, especially from institutional buyers looking to fill out new libraries, they say that most “legitimate” orders often come with coordination and negotiation, not just a straight purchase order.

      • pseudo@jlai.lu
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        9 hours ago

        I just went on and read more article of the topics people shared in the comment. That’s sounds worrying indeed but my point is more that Annans Archive appeal is very abstract in a way that it présent something that doesn’t have to be a problem in a very sensationnalising manner instead of being clear about what is whappening and what we can do.

    • Toga77@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      They’re destroying things that don’t have to be destroyed and compiling the information into privately owned megastructures they’ll then charge us to access while we own nothing and they can then alter the books.

      Nah I’m good. Everything these AI companies stand for is fucking evil and malicious.

      For every AI that researches a legit medical issue, they start literally burning fucking books, replacing jobs, screwing basically everyone, and making the world overall much worse.

      If you can’t see why these companies destroying any amount of books is bad, idk how to help you. Maybe look up a list of who has ever mass destroyed books. There’s not a lot of good people there.

      • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Humans have been scanning books for decades. All books created today exist electronically before (a copy) gets physically printed of a book that remains existing.

        Type writers are a museum piece. not a utility anymore. Calm down.

        • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          54 minutes ago

          So you have the digital source of literally any book? Literally any single book you yourself didn’t write or publish.

          Because the source code for GTA6 exists, but you sure as shit don’t have it.

        • pseudo@jlai.lu
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          7 hours ago

          All books created today exist electronically before (a copy) gets physically printed of a book that remains existing.

          Not really. There is a lot of full manuscrit books made to this day. By scholar in region where electricity is not as much available. By student compile hand-written notes from oral teaching. By people composing small things for family and friends or just for themselves. By activist and locally involed people making just on or a few copy to be share in physicial Space around them.

          That’s a huge part of what exist outside the publishing industry.

          • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            And we used copiers and voice recorders for that since before computers. That has been used since the 70s. Even earlier.

            scanning that and adding it to the common knowledge and making it accessible is something we’ve been doing since computers were a thing decades before today.

            Students now still use recordings that can be parsed into text.

            Suddenly it’s an issue now because someone needs so badly to be outraged by literally everything that can be distorted into a rage bait title like this one.

        • Toga77@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          You don’t need to destroy books to scan them.

          You’re very gullible.

          • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            “gullible”

            hurry, you better take up reading books to learn the meaning of these words you’re using before the AI ‘destroys’ the useless copy you never wanted nor thought about until now.

    • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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      10 hours ago

      All those books seem to end up in goodwill eventually. What better place to gather them all for destruction.

      • pseudo@jlai.lu
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        7 hours ago

        Many should probably be distroy without training a LLM or we will get models that are aggressivly mysoginist and who verbally abuse female users, on top of every other problem they cause.