Then why does Amazon want them? Why train an AI on worthless books?

Individually you might be right. Some cookbook from 20 years ago probably is worthless to most people. But then there'll be one person who spends an afternoon hunting it down, bookstore to bookstore, because their aunt used to have a copy and they want to check a recipe, or some such.

This is cultural violence on a massive scale.

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markdown 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I've been looking for a recipe book that my mother used to own called "Taste of the Tropics". Every few years I search online, and while I find a listing from time to time, it's always been "Currently unavailable".

I just searched again now and found 3 used copies on AbeBooks for about US$11 incl. shipping. Absolutely made my day.

I don't know if adult me will enjoy it beyond the nostalgia, but there's a coconut cake recipe in there that I will never forget.

Like you said, just about nobody on planet earth would care if the billionaires ingested and then destroyed those final copies, but I'd have been gutted if they'd beat me to it.

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dirasieb an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Then why does Amazon want them?

quantity has a quality of its own

>Some cookbook from 20 years ago probably is worthless to most people. But then there'll be one person who spends an afternoon hunting it down, bookstore to bookstore, because their aunt used to have a copy and they want to check a recipe, or some such.

ask your aunt for the recipe, look it up online with a search engine, ask an LLM by describing how it tastes and the ingredients you remember, this is really not that complicated

>This is cultural violence on a massive scale.

could you be any more dramatic? you're acting like we are actually losing anything when in reality we're gaining from this, you'll just be able to ask the AI for the recipe instead of wasting hours and hours hunting down some old book and ordering it online for an exorbitant amount

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hattmall 27 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Just like with most things, LLM's are terrible at recipes if you are actually a good cook.

Your example is very flawed because if the LLM gave you the exact recipe then it would be infringement, but many recipes need to be exact. LLMs aggregate information so wanting a very specific recipe (to the point of hunting down an old cookbook) is a non-starter because it the LLM is really only guessing.

	▲	markdown 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I agree with you on your point, but I just wanted to let you know that recipes can't be copyrighted. If you write: "Smash one egg into that bowl and feel the power. Sprinkle salt onto it salt bae style." That's copyrighted and I can't copy that word for word. But I can publish my own recipe which is an exact copy of yours but written like so: Ingredients: 1 egg 1 teaspoon salt Method: Combine egg and salt. Or write that in any way I want that isn't a word for word copy of your recipe.

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voidhorse 38 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

What are we gaining other than your silly little hypothetical?

The whole problem here is:

- Not everyone agrees on the utility / value of AI. - A small handful of companies control frontier models and get to shape how these inputs are ultimately put to use. - As Sam Altman put it, they want to charge you, in perpetuity, for "intelligence" as a service. Contrarily, anyone can access a book usually for a one time purchase fee and read it forever. You'll be paying per token to look up auntie's recipe every time instead of just, you know, reading the book.

Not to mention you are erasing the voices of human beings who had lives and may have related their experiences and emotions in those texts. That anyone would be comfortable with a corporation they know nothing about destroying potentially unique information of the lives and stories of real human beings, locking it away forever as one granular component of a stochastic content generator, the human expression in its actual form never to be accessed again, is absolutely appalling to me.

I think you should reflect more on who will really benefit, who has the control, and why humanity as a collective is potentially losing as collateral, without having much say about it.

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IshKebab 35 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Oh no, some hypothetical person can't find a mediocre cookbook from 20 years ago. Amazon stop!!

Do you even hear yourself?