These stories are weird, because actual professional specialized book dealers pulp books by the millions. People keep pointing out, and it doesn't seem to sink in, that model trainers only have use for a single copy of a book. Even if they were literally burning these books to spite you, they'd be destroying an infinitesimal fraction of the books the book trade already destroys.

It is not natural in the industry to preserve books! It's tricky to even give most books away. Our library has big donation boxes, and my understanding is: most of those books are destroyed.

The copyright thing I get, sort of (I mean, it's galling, because it's such a total special pleading argument from a cohort of people who otherwise have absolute contempt for copyright on anything other than code). The model trainers are getting away with something other people haven't gotten away with. OK, sure.

But this seems like the AI water use story, where the reality is that existing industries do whatever the bad thing is at scales cosmically larger than AI ever could, and we're zeroing in on this weird little slice of it that AI does. Like, let me know when we stop growing pecans in the California desert, and then we can talk?

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Levitz 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The outraged people don't care. They hate AI, and so anything surrounding AI that can be evil is evil. Books are good, AI destroys books, AI is bad.

Furthermore, they like that AI is bad. Because they think it's bad, and being right feels good.

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tptacek 19 hours ago | parent [-]

I think people genuinely don't get that book destruction is like a pretty natural part of the book lifecycle.

	▲	Levitz 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It doesn't matter if they get it, because they wouldn't care either way. They would just pivot to "but more are destroyed this way" or "but these have value or they wouldn't buy them" or some variant of it. There is no logical train of thought. It's not about logic.

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eru 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And the solution to the water issues can be found in any introductory textbook on the subject: a water price.

> People keep pointing out, and it doesn't seem to sink in, that model trainers only have use for a single copy of a book.

Please pardon the tangent: that's what always bothered me about the Borg in Star Trek. Why do they need to assimilate whole species? I'm sure there are enough volunteers in the federation that would join the Borg collective. Even a handful should be enough.

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lanyard-textile 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Why do they need to assimilate whole species?

So then they're gone :)

When the borg is threatened ("threatened") by a race, they choose to effectively end their way of life one way or the other. That is done by assimilation or by death.

If only a single outstanding member of a species becomes a threat, that's a strong signal for their overall potential; therefore everything needs to go, the sooner the better.

	▲	eru 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I thought the Borg wanted to get better and better? Leaving the species essentially intact, and absorbing a few members every so often gives you much more material to work with than a one time infusion: they are still evolving and changing.

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ivell 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Knowledge of every member of a species is better than few samples? LLM became better due to its huge dataset instead of just few samples.

	▲	eru 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You hit diminishing returns pretty quickly. And LLM training only bothers with a single copy of each book; they don't even need to destroy the documents. (Eg they didn't destroy the American declaration of independence to train on it.)

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guax 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Its nuanced and complicated but its not fully without reason. I think there would be a compromise of using those books while playing the "we're helping preserve them part" but I don't think that even crosses the mind of most Ai CEOs in an honest way.

The crux of the issue is that it is mostly a PR problem. AI is amazing but being promoted, in the eyes of many, by the worst people imaginable. Very akin, and overlapping in many ways to the crypto crowd.

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imperfect_light 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't know how it works today, but 20 years ago bookstores wouldn't return unsold books (too expensive to ship) but would simply tear the covers off and throw them in the garbage.

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fenomas 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

More and more I feel like anti-AI is a bigger bubble than AI. It seems like every week it expands into a new dimension - anti-Flock protesters tearing down years-old traffic cameras that were used for research into auto accidents, etc.

Like, the current thing in the news cycle is a poll that young people are now more worried than hopeful about AI. Which sounds scary, but my first thought is that one could find similar polls from the 80s and 90s about satanic cults or alien abduction..

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customguy 17 hours ago | parent [-]

> my first thought is that one could find similar polls from the 80s and 90s about satanic cults or alien abduction..

There are were polls about people being "more worried than hopeful" about satanic cults or alien abductions? With the youth being the most worried about satanic cults? Just like that knee-jerk "it's the bigger bubble", that makes zero sense.

As per the GDC 2026 State of the Industry poll, "52% said gen AI is bad for the industry, nearly double the 30% who held that view last year". But sure, everybody but HN, LinkedIn, and X bros are just luddites clutching pearls in their tiny bubble. They're the weak and stupid ones, and that is why the stupid shit said about them, day in and day out, isn't actually stupid. It all checks out.

	▲	fenomas 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

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globular-toast 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They pulp books that have many copies surplus to requirement, not the last few copies in second hand book shops.

What if people like food more than AI? Have you considered that?