You're trying to imagine rare valuable books and then fantasizing about AI companies destroying them, but what's actually happening here is that AI companies are acquiring, digitizing, and then pulping the instruction manuals to 1983-vintage copy machines.

This is all such a special-pleading argument. You know what other institution snatches up books and destroys them at huge scale? Public library systems. People clean out their attics and basements and drop off huge boxes full of books at libraries; libraries take the things they know will circulate, and destroy the rest. Take a guess as to how Þórbergur Þórðarson fares at the Newark Public Library. Wait, bad example, they stopped accepting book donations because nobody wants your old books. They tell you to give the books to thrift stores instead. Guess what the thrift stores do with them?

You know how many times I've read stories about the grave damage libraries are doing to human culture? Zero, zero times.

▲

frm88 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Source? You state that in a tone that implies you have verifiable knowlege of this. All the information I found says that the exact number, titles and authors are under NDA.

▲

svachalek 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Given no information, would you assume companies that are buying "huge quantities" of "rare" books are getting first edition Jules Verne by the crate, or 1989 Highlights magazines recovered from dentist offices?

	▲	runarberg 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Both. I think they are just buying whatever they can get their hands on most of it is going to be junk, but one in a million is going to be a rare and valuable book which we didn’t even know existed. After scanning and destroying 10 million books, AI companies will have destroyed 10 such books. (I am obviously assuming a Poisson distribution here where I pulled the parameter p = 1/1000000 out of thin air; point is p is non-zero; and at this scale the undesirable event is bound to happen a bunch of times).

▲

tptacek 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's in the 404 story.

▲

runarberg 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I assume public libraries know what they are doing and know which book they are destroying, that they keep an accurate inventory and hire professionals maintaining said inventory and marking which books can safely be destroyed.

I assume no such things of AI companies.

▲

tptacek 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Obviously that's not true. Newark is literally telling people to talk all their old rare books to thrift stores, which will immediately throw them in dumpsters.

▲

runarberg 7 hours ago | parent [-]

This is a bad comparison. Public libraries are trying their best to preserve rare copies, despite being overwhelmed and underfunded. If they come across a rare copy chances are it will be preserved. When an AI company comes across a rare book, it will not recognize it as such.

There is also a fundamental difference in intention. AI companies are seeking out old books and will destroy them. Public libraries are trying their best but simply don‘t have the resources to find rare books in every collection.

And finally there is a fundamental difference in scale. Public libraries are not buying millions of copies to destroy, completely eliminating the chance they will ever be discovered.

---

PS. I don‘t like the anti-academic tone of your post. Librarians know what they are doing, their expertise is valuable, and when they act according to their specialized knowledge it does have a positive effect on the world.

▲

tptacek 6 hours ago | parent [-]

What comparison? I'm talking about libraries as they actually exist and you're talking about what you think libraries should be doing. I'm arguing positively, and you're arguing normatively.

I'm not "anti-academic". I'm just very involved in my local community and I read the annual reports from our library system. We accept book donations, like a lot of suburban library systems do (from our extremely book-y community), and we are open about the fact that most of those books get trashed. We do not have the personnel on staff you claim libraries generally do.

I would say that between the two of us, I'm the one arguing more respectfully about libraries. I see them as real institutions with real pressures and constraints that do an important public service, and you see them as an instrumentality in your argument against AI.

▲

runarberg 5 hours ago | parent [-]

You were the one who brought public libraries into this conversation, in an attempt to legitimize this practice by AI companies. I assumed this attempt was you saying the two behaviors are comparable.

I pushed back on that comparison. These behaviors are in fact not comparable. What the AI companies are doing is bad actually, and what libraries are doing is, while unfortunate, acceptable, given the limited resources they have.

	▲	tptacek 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, I brought public libraries into this conversation, because they daily destroy hundreds of thousands of books, most of them without any professional evaluation whatsoever. I don't have a problem with this, because I understand a little how the book trade works, and whatever romantic idea people have about the preservation of books, it has little to do with what books actually are. What I don't understand is your response to this. An AI company digitizes a book before destroying it: "bad actually". A public library takes a cartload of books to a dumpster without so much as opening the front cover of any of the books: just fine.