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

[id1om@mastodonapp.uk]

@overholt
I came across this related substack yesterday, where the author has additional information to impart...

"Is an AI company buying up all the used books? (I don’t think so, not this time.) | #103
But no matter what, the Library of Alexandria is still burning."

"The theory that’s taken off like wildfire on Twitter is that it’s an AI company buying all these books to scan them for purposes of creating more training data for the algorithm. My theory, which is a little more mundane, is that it’s just simple financial arbitrage."

https://charliebecker.substack.com/p/is-an-ai-company-buying-up-all-the

[dukeboitans@mas.to]

@overholt That's something only a sociopath would say.

[iain_bright@mastodon.green]

@overholt
What a load of bs #noai #mastodaoine

[ronanmcd@mastodon.green]

@overholt nearly drowned from vomiting in mouth

[francoisprague@mastodon.social]

@overholt

🤮

These people are psychopaths

[uastaeus@mastodon.social]

@overholt

I would use this exact quote if I had to explain to someone with a gustatory dysfunction, what rancid butter tastes like.

[cainmark@mstdn.social]

@overholt @sinabhfuil

Absolutely agree!

[kagan@wandering.shop]

@overholt The auto-playing video of the books being destroyed, after para 2 of the story, should come with a content warning. Holy crap, I was *not* ready to have my stomach churned like that before my first cup of tea this morning. 

[kagan@wandering.shop]

@overholt “A physical book is a delivery mechanism for information.... the knowledge enters the intellectual [cycle].”

Okay, so I could ask the AI model, "Give me the entire, unaltered text of $TITLE_OF_BOOK," and it would do it? It wouldn't make up some random crap that wasn't actually the original text?

Yeah, I don't buy that for a moment.

The *actual content* of the book has been destroyed. It's a tragedy.

[crazyeddie@mastodon.social]

@overholt This process is called "digestion".

Accused of eating books, they don't deny; they describe the process like they're teaching children how fluffy the bunny turns into poop.

[pattykimura@beige.party]

@overholt

Fahrenheit 451, AI version.
Sure, you can read Shakespeare, Marx, Ray Bradbury, Little Women, the Bible... AI filtered: "Would you like me to summarize this book for you? I can do that."

[maia@mastodon.art]

@overholt “information that is sent into a black hole is not destroyed. it can still be recovered via hawking radiation”

[burnoutqueen@todon.nl]

@overholt this sounds like a supervillain from a book

[allpoints@mstdn.social]

@overholt language is fascinating. Today I learned, "The book's value has migrated." is Techbro speak for, "We've stolen another book."

[jd_cunningham@sunny.garden]

@overholt They don't have the foggiest idea of what a book actually is. Or perhaps the destruction of access to knowledge and human connection is the point.

[nicksilkey@hachyderm.io]

@overholt served its purpose ... to the destroyer.

Man. Treating the collection of human knowledge and art in printed books as single use is just peak capitalism. It's no wonder that same knowledge and art is ultimate being rent sought token by token, chat bubble over chat bubble, by the same mindset. The shoe fits.

[petko@social.petko.me]

@overholt words of the utterly deranged

[sennoma@chaos.social]

@overholt I have rarely seen such weak, sanctimonious, disingenuous drivel; nor ever wanted so badly to stab its author.

[mzedp@plasmatrap.com]

@overholt@glammr.us Funny, they seem to be claiming that the information is preserved, but recent copyrights claims were dismissed because the "training" is supposed to be "transformative".

So which is it bubs? Is it there, or is it transformed?

[andersgo@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@overholt @briankrebs So Marie Antoinette obviously didn’t die on the guilliotine in 1793.