From the website of the company that’s destroying books to feed them into the ravenous AI maw.
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From the website of the company that’s destroying books to feed them into the ravenous AI maw.
“A physical book is a delivery mechanism for information. Once that information has been extracted and encoded into an AI model, the delivery mechanism has served its purpose. What remains is paper, ink, and binding material. The book is not destroyed. Its value has migrated. The paper returns to the material cycle; the knowledge enters the intellectual one.” https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/internet/ai-labs-buy-scan-shred-millions-of-rare-books/news-story/0c3b45a67093ab462a587a0348538ce9
@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.
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@librarymonster @overholt seems implicit given everything we’ve seen with AI and layoffs and everything else.
“A physical being is a delivery mechanism for skilled labor. Once those skills have been extracted and encoded into an AI model, the delivery mechanism has served its purpose. What remains is blood, bone, and binding material. The being is not destroyed. Its value has migrated. The being returns to the material cycle; the skills enter the production one.”
@shadows
Had very similar thoughts when I read the quote. Those insufferable bros... -
From the website of the company that’s destroying books to feed them into the ravenous AI maw.
“A physical book is a delivery mechanism for information. Once that information has been extracted and encoded into an AI model, the delivery mechanism has served its purpose. What remains is paper, ink, and binding material. The book is not destroyed. Its value has migrated. The paper returns to the material cycle; the knowledge enters the intellectual one.” https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/internet/ai-labs-buy-scan-shred-millions-of-rare-books/news-story/0c3b45a67093ab462a587a0348538ce9
@overholt I would feed the leaders of ISBNdb alive into a wood chipper, and feel no remorse.
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From the website of the company that’s destroying books to feed them into the ravenous AI maw.
“A physical book is a delivery mechanism for information. Once that information has been extracted and encoded into an AI model, the delivery mechanism has served its purpose. What remains is paper, ink, and binding material. The book is not destroyed. Its value has migrated. The paper returns to the material cycle; the knowledge enters the intellectual one.” https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/internet/ai-labs-buy-scan-shred-millions-of-rare-books/news-story/0c3b45a67093ab462a587a0348538ce9
@overholt Soon the only bind we'll know, is the one AI put us in.
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Apparently the quote was shocking enough they've rewritten the post, but IA has the receipts. https://web.archive.org/web/20260720152647/https://isbndb.com/blog/print-books-sourcing-ai-training/
@overholt It blows my mind that these idiots are so far detached from reality that destroying books to them is just an optics issue.
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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.
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From the website of the company that’s destroying books to feed them into the ravenous AI maw.
“A physical book is a delivery mechanism for information. Once that information has been extracted and encoded into an AI model, the delivery mechanism has served its purpose. What remains is paper, ink, and binding material. The book is not destroyed. Its value has migrated. The paper returns to the material cycle; the knowledge enters the intellectual one.” https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/internet/ai-labs-buy-scan-shred-millions-of-rare-books/news-story/0c3b45a67093ab462a587a0348538ce9
@overholt whose?
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@overholt I have a lot of ebooks around, but I've occasionally made a point of buying physical books, in part because digital data is so vulnerable. Even the DRM-free epub files are vulnerable to the decay of storage media with short lifespans.
The mass destruction of physical books seems like an intentional threat.
People talk about this being the result of a grotesque judicial interpretation of copyright law, but I don't think "AI" companies care about law that much. They seem to violate laws pretty frequently. This looks to me like a deliberate act of violence. They actually intend to destroy physical books.
@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. -
@riley @Guillotine_Jones @overholt Actually, that language pretty much comes from dicta in the federal court decision allowing one AI company to settle copyright infringement claims for $1.6 billion. That decision said that the only way around such claims is to destroy the physical book after extracting the information, because then you're not stealing, you're transforming. An absolutely unintended consequence on the court's part, but the AI companies all are running with it.
@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 whose?
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Apparently the quote was shocking enough they've rewritten the post, but IA has the receipts. https://web.archive.org/web/20260720152647/https://isbndb.com/blog/print-books-sourcing-ai-training/
@overholt Ironic, given that IA itself has destroyed plenty of physical books to scan them
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@overholt Ironic, given that IA itself has destroyed plenty of physical books to scan them
@linguistory @overholt iirc they mostly do non-destructive scanning
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@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.
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From the website of the company that’s destroying books to feed them into the ravenous AI maw.
“A physical book is a delivery mechanism for information. Once that information has been extracted and encoded into an AI model, the delivery mechanism has served its purpose. What remains is paper, ink, and binding material. The book is not destroyed. Its value has migrated. The paper returns to the material cycle; the knowledge enters the intellectual one.” https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/internet/ai-labs-buy-scan-shred-millions-of-rare-books/news-story/0c3b45a67093ab462a587a0348538ce9
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From the website of the company that’s destroying books to feed them into the ravenous AI maw.
“A physical book is a delivery mechanism for information. Once that information has been extracted and encoded into an AI model, the delivery mechanism has served its purpose. What remains is paper, ink, and binding material. The book is not destroyed. Its value has migrated. The paper returns to the material cycle; the knowledge enters the intellectual one.” https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/internet/ai-labs-buy-scan-shred-millions-of-rare-books/news-story/0c3b45a67093ab462a587a0348538ce9
@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.
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From the website of the company that’s destroying books to feed them into the ravenous AI maw.
“A physical book is a delivery mechanism for information. Once that information has been extracted and encoded into an AI model, the delivery mechanism has served its purpose. What remains is paper, ink, and binding material. The book is not destroyed. Its value has migrated. The paper returns to the material cycle; the knowledge enters the intellectual one.” https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/internet/ai-labs-buy-scan-shred-millions-of-rare-books/news-story/0c3b45a67093ab462a587a0348538ce9
@overholt "the value has been migrated" (into our greedy for-profit hands)
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@librarymonster @overholt seems implicit given everything we’ve seen with AI and layoffs and everything else.
“A physical being is a delivery mechanism for skilled labor. Once those skills have been extracted and encoded into an AI model, the delivery mechanism has served its purpose. What remains is blood, bone, and binding material. The being is not destroyed. Its value has migrated. The being returns to the material cycle; the skills enter the production one.”
@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.
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@overholt language is fascinating. Today I learned, "The book's value has migrated." is Techbro speak for, "We've stolen another book."
@allpoints @overholt Migrated...wait that's what geese do....so like the goose, the book was not valued.
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From the website of the company that’s destroying books to feed them into the ravenous AI maw.
“A physical book is a delivery mechanism for information. Once that information has been extracted and encoded into an AI model, the delivery mechanism has served its purpose. What remains is paper, ink, and binding material. The book is not destroyed. Its value has migrated. The paper returns to the material cycle; the knowledge enters the intellectual one.” https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/internet/ai-labs-buy-scan-shred-millions-of-rare-books/news-story/0c3b45a67093ab462a587a0348538ce9
@overholt These people are idiots.
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@overholt language is fascinating. Today I learned, "The book's value has migrated." is Techbro speak for, "We've stolen another book."
@allpoints @overholt "Aw damn, looks like someone migrated the value of my bike!"