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

[overholt@glammr.us]

@sinabhfuil I am so glad to be in charge of material mostly recorded on incredibly durable parchment and rag paper that will need little more than a safe and stable environment to remain usable for centuries. Digital records are mayflies in comparison.

[timtfj@mastodon.social]

@eleanorrees @overholt And of processing with intelligence. It galls me that they dare use the word at all.

[gimulnautti@mastodon.green]

@overholt Bullshit trying to sound philosophical. Which is exactly what AI is most of the time.

In Logan's Run, a classic sci-fi picture, all the books had been destroyed, and people could only read summaries of them.

[samiamsam@mastodon.social]

@overholt

psycopaths

[kimlockhartga@beige.party]

@overholt It's also short-sighted. We cannot conceive of a massive interruption to our access to technology? It could happen in so many ways.

[heinragas@mublog.nl]

@overholt Tell me you don't understand how information works without telling me you don't understand how information works while you are telling me that you know how information works

[futuristicrobert@infosec.exchange]

@overholt "AI bros are a bullshit delivery mechanism. They possess no redeeming qualities. They provide no value. They are parasites."

[rokabe@mastodon.social]

@overholt

It's only just twigged that it's in an AI company's interest to destroy sources of information they don't own.

[dasgrueneblatt@wien.rocks]

@overholt 🤮

[research_ftw@sciences.social]

@overholt Not only do they have no appreciation for the written word or the sense of communion writers have with their readers. But they actively destroy it after they have 'consumed' it. This shows a highly capitalist consumption mindset that would rather destroy than share, so they can control it. Says a lot about the state of the world.

[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.