I was not aware of this aspect of the #AI madness/crime -

[sebastian@social.itu.dk]

I was not aware of this aspect of the #AI madness/crime -

AI companies hording & destroying books after extracting their #content, so that in the future, their portals be the only path to knowledge.

First source [#german] is new, about #ZoomBooks buying 100,000s of #books in #europe, building dedicated warehouses just to collect them -

second source is 2025 about #Anthropic s practice

https://www.srf.ch/kultur/gesellschaft-religion/jagd-auf-alte-buecher-ki-firmen-kaufen-antiquariate-leer-und-vernichten-die-buecher

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-millions-of-print-books-to-build-its-ai-models/

#thereIsNoAI
#thereIsInParticularNoSustainableAI

[smeschmesch@mastodon.social]

@sebastian "m*dness" is ableist

[folfdk@helvede.net]

@sebastian

"Only path to knowledge"

Are they hoarding every copy of every book?

It doesn't sound like that to me, from the text in the links.

[haverholm@radikal.social]

@smeschmesch @sebastian

— Hey, "AI" companies are not only burning climate quotas, now they're burning physical books to train their useless product.
— Let's talk about how you phrase that.

🤯

[sebastian@social.itu.dk]

@folfdk

agreeing with the remark that destruction of books here is a side effect rather than the mission goal - as they are trying to buy many (millions of) books, but of course not all, not each and every copy.

i sounded a bit over-dramatic there