> As if the AI industry is only shredding "crappy" books.

Do you, or anyone else, have any source suggesting that they’re buying highly valuable rare books and shredding them?

The kind of $150 rare book that you had to buy from a specialty collector who graded it is in a completely different category. You’re thinking of “rare books” in the historically rare, valuable, and collectible category.

The book sellers shipping off orders of 1000s of books at a time to these facilities are calling the books “rare” because they may only have 1 copy, not because it’s a collectible with a high price tag.