From the website of the company that’s destroying books to feed them into the ravenous AI maw.

[steveclough@metalhead.club]

@overholt I mean, no, no no. Stupid. As expected, utterly missing the point of books.

Hardly surprising given that they are only interested in words that sound like they make sense.

[emassey0135@caneandable.social]

@overholt @jpellis2008 When you train an AI model on information, it is like giving it to a lossy compression algorithm, so information can never be fully preserved that way. And its not like MP3 or a copy machine either, where what is lost is just characteristics of the information not the information itself. The information itself is subject to lossy compression, since the AI could give you things like summaries of the book and its sections, its writing style, quotes of some passages, etc but it wouldn't be able to quote the whole book back to you. Also it is doubtful that AI models created inside companies like that would last longer than a physical book or a digital archival copy of it, meaning even the lossily compressed copy created this way is temporary.

[r_alb@mastodon.social]

@shadows
Had very similar thoughts when I read the quote. Those insufferable bros...

@librarymonster @overholt

[metaning@mastodon.social]

@overholt I would feed the leaders of ISBNdb alive into a wood chipper, and feel no remorse.

[modernmaslow@techhub.social]

@overholt Soon the only bind we'll know, is the one AI put us in.

[ngrn@soc.ngrn.uk]

@overholt It blows my mind that these idiots are so far detached from reality that destroying books to them is just an optics issue.

[ralfmaximus@mastodon.social]

@mercurial @overholt

One reason they seek out old, out-of-circulation books is their uniqueness. Their LLM will be the only one trained on (say) Virginia Bird Spotter's Guide, 1956 Edition.

So you see, if they let anyone else have that book they forfeit that uniqueness.

It's fuckin evil but it's how they think.

[classwario@mastodon.social]

@overholt whose?

[hackersquirrel@kolektiva.social]

@foolishowl

@overholt
I sometimes take my ebooks and typeset, impose, print and bind them into real books. Often softcover, but my favs get hand stitched hardcover treatment.
I reserve this for books that are public domain or authors that are deceased.

[guillotine_jones@beige.party]

@msbellows @riley @overholt
Granted, you're paraphrasing the ruling about destroying books after stealing their content for Ai training Mr Bellows, and yes, these may be unintended consequences, and yes, I am not a lawyer, but doggone it, it sure looks like these Ai bros are interpreting this ruling as a license to kill human knowledge by destroying books.
My blood is boiling, and it's not books that I think should be reduced to pulp, but the fortunes of those who are using their riches to impoverish everyone else.
I

[overholt@glammr.us]

@classwario See here: https://glammr.us/@overholt/117009712586141270

[linguistory@code4lib.social]

@overholt Ironic, given that IA itself has destroyed plenty of physical books to scan them

[jessamyn@glammr.us]

@linguistory @overholt iirc they mostly do non-destructive scanning

https://digitization.archive.org/digitization/

[classwario@mastodon.social]

@overholt Thank you for taking the time. My reply was an attempt at snarky rhetorical brevity. Essentially @kosure ’s point. Whose intellectual cycle/property? It’s theirs. Their black box. Their interpretations. Their conclusions. Their abstractions. Their decisions and influence as source material gone. Distillation abstraction ownership while claiming sagacity, while demanding transaction tribute.

[javerous@social.sourcemac.com]

@overholt @sv1 These people are mentally hill. I think they are the kind who hate physical world, their body, everything. They just want their mind uploaded somewhere and live in a virtual world.

[michelleporche@sfba.social]

@overholt I have not felt this much pain learning about the destruction of books since I read “The Library Book” by Susan Orlean about the LA library fire. Recommend this read by the way.

[amberage@eldritch.cafe]

@overholt "the value has been migrated" (into our greedy for-profit hands)

[schrotthaufen@mastodon.social]

@shadows @librarymonster @overholt @mamsell Given that the tech fascists literally envision trillions of digital humans (obviously only the plebs, they get immortal human bodies) colonizing the universe, it’s the logical conclusion of their argument.

[bumblefish@mastodon.scot]

@allpoints @overholt Migrated...wait that's what geese do....so like the goose, the book was not valued.

[heafnerj@mstdn.social]

@overholt These people are idiots.