Librarians were already doing this at scale in a process euphemistically called "weeding":

https://www.ala.org/tools/challengesupport/selectionpolicyto...

oliwarner 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is a bizarre comparison.

Weeding is the natural process of disposing of less-demand books. Like the rest of us, libraries operate in finite space, so if they want new books, they have to remove ones their users aren't using. Most libraries will try to sell books before disposing of them in any destructive way.

What similarities do you see here?

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Jweb_Guru 2 hours ago | parent [-]

People are very desperate to try to claim that something that's somewhat obviously morally wrong is actually highly nuanced, because it makes them feel uncomfortable.

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pfdietz 16 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

No, we're just telling you your moral intuition is absurd.

	▲	Jweb_Guru 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, clearly it's completely absurd to think that shredding rare books to more cheaply train LLMs is anything but a moral good, which is why there is this entire thread is full of people jumping through hoops to explain how it's technically legal (and therefore fine) and "you wouldn't have bought those books anyway" (I suppose we don't have the choice anymore!) and, most amusingly, "they're actually becoming digitized and searchable this way" (are LLMs stochastic parrots or aren't they?).

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03284782470 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People are very desperate to try to claim that something that's highly nuanced is actually obviously morally wrong, because it makes them feel self-satisfied.

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streetfighter64 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I would disagree on the "obviously morally wrong". What's the alternative for the books if they were "saved" from the fate of being scanned and shredded? How many rare books have you personally brought in the last year? Not everything that's ever created needs to be preserved forever.

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emddudley 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Libraries are not archives, and weeding does not mean destruction.

	▲	dingaling an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Libraries in my area dispose of 'weeded' books by covert means, so that public ire isn't aroused by finding dumpsters full of discarded books. They are most assuredly destroyed.

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malfist 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is really dishonest framing, unless you really, honestly can't tell a difference between pulping a mass market paperback romance novel that there's 3 million of in circulation, and shredding an 18th century botanical text that there's only 2 copies of in existence.

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dwedge 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You call of dishonest framing, but you're begging the question twice.

Once that AI companies are really shredding 200 year old rare books, and once that libraries are only weeding mass market pulp fiction.

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malfist 2 hours ago | parent [-]

That is literally what this article is about.

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streetfighter64 an hour ago | parent [-]

The "article" in question is a tweet. The "rare botanical text" is just an example the author of the tweet made up in order to generate sympathy.

	▲	malfist an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The tweet is about a 404 Media article about the practice. It's linked elsewhere here.