Anthropic spent billions of dollars to slice the spines off millions of books, including very rare ones.
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@Dusty_Marc @dbattistella It is a circulating economy. Books get sold by antique book stores and return eventually. What happena here stops this dead in its tracks: It is a book burning pyre.
@SalemsLot @dbattistella My experience is: they don't buy any more, at least only selected ones. Rest gets burnt.
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Anthropic spent billions of dollars to slice the spines off millions of books, including very rare ones.
AI companies are purchasing large quantities of used and rare books and scanning their contents to train LLMs. They then turn the originals to pulp.
The sum of human thought, digitized and shredded. Every book that gets scanned disappears from the physical world permanently.
Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
@dbattistella I find it funny that they complain about Chinese AI companies that copy their models and sell them for cheap


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@Npars01 yes, they want to own knowledge and make us pay for it.
"Paying for it twice" is a common strategy in rentier capitalism.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/elon-musk-tesla-ev-subsidies-donald-trump-flip-flop/
The public pay for the research, institutions, & infrastructure via taxation, then pay again as consumers in the form of fees, subscriptions, & payments to private interests seeking profits.
The oligarchs are trying for "paying for it three times" next.
https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/03/19/Governments-Make-Taxpayers-Subsidize-Corporate-Cleanup-Oil-Wells/https://blog.ucs.org/karen-perry-stillerman/us-farm-subsidies-make-taxpayers-pay-twice/
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Copyright is not the enemy here. Don't go there--the enemy are these heartless, greedy companies that are trying to EVADE the protections of copyright (etc.) which should have (but failed to) save these actual books.
@LeslieBurns @dbattistella copyright, artificial scarcity, has always been the problem. there is no material need to restrict copying books, music, videos, software etc.. Copying is never stealing. For long capitalists wanted you to believe it is. Now new capitalists show up. I'm on neither side, but i want copyright to fall -
@LeslieBurns @dbattistella copyright, artificial scarcity, has always been the problem. there is no material need to restrict copying books, music, videos, software etc.. Copying is never stealing. For long capitalists wanted you to believe it is. Now new capitalists show up. I'm on neither side, but i want copyright to fall
Oh...my first block of the day. Joy!
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Oh...my first block of the day. Joy!
@LeslieBurns @dbattistella read marx, please -
Anthropic spent billions of dollars to slice the spines off millions of books, including very rare ones.
AI companies are purchasing large quantities of used and rare books and scanning their contents to train LLMs. They then turn the originals to pulp.
The sum of human thought, digitized and shredded. Every book that gets scanned disappears from the physical world permanently.
Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
@dbattistella
Horror movie in less than a minute. -
Anthropic spent billions of dollars to slice the spines off millions of books, including very rare ones.
AI companies are purchasing large quantities of used and rare books and scanning their contents to train LLMs. They then turn the originals to pulp.
The sum of human thought, digitized and shredded. Every book that gets scanned disappears from the physical world permanently.
Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
@dbattistella Hmm, I wonder how close this actually is to what happened to the library in Alexandria.
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@dbattistella Human greed and will to power knows no bounds…
@gimulnautti @dbattistella
...And has no morals. -
Anthropic spent billions of dollars to slice the spines off millions of books, including very rare ones.
AI companies are purchasing large quantities of used and rare books and scanning their contents to train LLMs. They then turn the originals to pulp.
The sum of human thought, digitized and shredded. Every book that gets scanned disappears from the physical world permanently.
Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
@dbattistella this is horrible. #noAI
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Anthropic spent billions of dollars to slice the spines off millions of books, including very rare ones.
AI companies are purchasing large quantities of used and rare books and scanning their contents to train LLMs. They then turn the originals to pulp.
The sum of human thought, digitized and shredded. Every book that gets scanned disappears from the physical world permanently.
Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
@dbattistella This is heartbreaking and disgusting. When I have a book in my possession that awful, full of bad information or worse, even then I can't bear to destroy it. I'm of German background--the idea of destroying books hits pretty close to home, and it gives me feels.
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This is the magnificent library Anthropic amassed, before destroying it because it gave them a legal copyright loophole.
@dbattistella Imagine. Rebuilding the Library of Alexandria, then burning it down on purpose.
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@dbattistella I find it funny that they complain about Chinese AI companies that copy their models and sell them for cheap


@frank_zimmermann @dbattistella I find it funny that they can't do anything about it

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This is the magnificent library Anthropic amassed, before destroying it because it gave them a legal copyright loophole.
@dbattistella utterly despicable
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Anthropic spent billions of dollars to slice the spines off millions of books, including very rare ones.
AI companies are purchasing large quantities of used and rare books and scanning their contents to train LLMs. They then turn the originals to pulp.
The sum of human thought, digitized and shredded. Every book that gets scanned disappears from the physical world permanently.
Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
@dbattistella That's nothing more than modern-day book burning.
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@SalemsLot @dbattistella My experience is: they don't buy any more, at least only selected ones. Rest gets burnt.
@Dusty_Marc @dbattistella
I dont get your point. Destroying books for ideology (in this case singularity) is a fascist method. This is cultural warfare. It is inexcusable. -
Anthropic spent billions of dollars to slice the spines off millions of books, including very rare ones.
AI companies are purchasing large quantities of used and rare books and scanning their contents to train LLMs. They then turn the originals to pulp.
The sum of human thought, digitized and shredded. Every book that gets scanned disappears from the physical world permanently.
Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
Yet we've known how to scan intact books for the past six decades.
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Anthropic spent billions of dollars to slice the spines off millions of books, including very rare ones.
AI companies are purchasing large quantities of used and rare books and scanning their contents to train LLMs. They then turn the originals to pulp.
The sum of human thought, digitized and shredded. Every book that gets scanned disappears from the physical world permanently.
Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
@dbattistella somehow it reminds me of nazis burning books in the 1930s
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@dbattistella This is heartbreaking and disgusting. When I have a book in my possession that awful, full of bad information or worse, even then I can't bear to destroy it. I'm of German background--the idea of destroying books hits pretty close to home, and it gives me feels.
@ZenHeathen They want to be the information gatekeepers, demanding a toll for every bit of knowledge we need and crave. Reminds me of the Edward G. Robinson character Sol, in the dystopian film Soylent Green:
"Sol: Do you know how many books were published in this country once upon a time - when there was paper, power, and press that worked?"
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@Dusty_Marc @dbattistella
I dont get your point. Destroying books for ideology (in this case singularity) is a fascist method. This is cultural warfare. It is inexcusable.@SalemsLot @dbattistella what do you do when your parents deceise and you get to own all their stuff including thousands of books. And you go to the second hand book stores and the all tell you they have no space and thus no offer.
This Problem arises currently, thousand fold. And when the baby boomers will die away, it will get even more so.
Can you get my point now?