> From a historical precedent standpoint, this is akin to the burning of the library of Alexandria,

These comparisons are starting to get ridiculous. Why are so many people assuming there is exactly one copy of all of these important books available, that it’s sitting in the warehouse of a bulk book reseller, and that Anthropic is destroying the lone copy?

Your local library throws out books every year and nobody thought twice about it.

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mindcandy 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They are ridiculous because the reality of the situation is boring. Boring doesn’t drive engagement. So, all the clickbait headlines and ragebait comments imply scandal. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t get attention.

After being clickbaited and ragebaited, media consumers feel deeply anxious and angry. But, explaining that they are angry over a boring situation feels silly, not righteous. So, they give summaries, impressions, sometimes extrapolation of the bait they have been consuming. That feels righteous.

This observation applies to a wide variety of topics trending in the various media every day. Distinguishing injustice from ragebait unfortunately requires non-trivial effort from the reader.

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alightsoul 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Does china developing ai powered missiles sound ridiculous? It sounds ridiculous to me because the US is surely doing the same, It would be boring if we knew the us was doing the same. It is emotional to think about china destroying the US when it is just the antithesis of American exceptionalism. It reminds me of what Dario said about their stance on open source.

	▲	merely-unlikely 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That doesn't sound ridiculous at all (maybe reductive but not ridiculous). And the US doing the same doesn't make it any less interesting either. In fact the US's use of AI in developing target banks in a recent conflict caused quite a lot of consternation when publicly revealed. Ukraine has also recently used AI enabled autonomous drones to make an entire area one big "kill zone", no humans required. Not so ridiculous or boring if you ask me.

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snickerbockers 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>Why are so many people assuming there is exactly one copy of all of these important books available, and that Anthropic is destroying the lone copy?

Why are you assuming that each book gets scanned exactly one time and then never again? And why are you assuming that out-of-print books remain easily accessible so long as not every copy has been destroyed?

>Your local library throws out books every year and nobody thought twice about it.

When they're damaged beyond hope of repair from decades of wear. As for books that haven't fallen apart from being used as intended and merely are no longer desired, my local library generally sells them off at bargain prices. Of course I can't speak to your local library.

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BeetleB 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No. Almost none of the books you donate to the library get to the shelves. If they can sell it, they will. Otherwise they are thrown away.

I even read on a web site of a librarian that their library had stopped accepting donations because "patrons should know how to throw away their own trash".

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merely-unlikely 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> "patrons should know how to throw away their own trash"

That makes me a lot sadder than AI companies destroying the books but at least preserving (most of) their knowledge.

	▲	BeetleB 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's the reality. If you're old enough to remember when people subscribed to magazines ... how often did you throw out a magazine? How often have you thrown out manuals for products you don't use any more?

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Goronmon 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As for books that haven't fallen apart from being used as intended and merely are no longer desired, my local library generally sells them off at bargain prices.

What happens when the books don't sell?

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pfdietz 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Our local library-connected biannual book sale puts a large dumpster, about the size of an 18-wheel truck trailer, outside the warehouse where the sale is conducted. At the end of the sale it gets filled to the brim with waste inked cellulose, and sits there open in the weather until it's taken away for disposal.

	▲	merely-unlikely 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Is that intended as an implicit threat - buy or we trash?

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p-e-w 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They are thrown away, which has been happening since forever, and nobody ever gave a fuck until AI got involved.

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snickerbockers 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I think it hits different when you're buying large quantities of used books with an eye towards ones which aren't readily available online, and with the specific intention of destroying them.

If all these companies were doing was burning star wars tie-in novels and harry potter sequels nobody would care. That's not their goal because they already have those in their training set. The whole point here is to find rare or underappreciated books from the pre-digital era which nobody ever made publicly available in a digital format.

BTW destroying them isn't even necessary for scanning. It's the easiest way because removing the binding and turning it into a flat stack of papers solves many problems but there are actually dedicated book scanners designed to hold open the book while its photographed, and un-curling pages in post-processing was already a solved problem long before people were using AI to correct images.

	▲	ceasesurthinko 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Realistically the vast majority of those books haven't been touched for half a century and won't ever be read by a human again. It is a price to destroy these, but it's a price I would pay for progressing models towards AGI and the billions of lives it will save.

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johannes1234321 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> When they're damaged beyond hope of repair from decades of wear. As for books that haven't fallen apart from being used as intended and merely are no longer desired, my local library generally sells them off at bargain prices. Of course I can't speak to your local library.

Many books aren't lent and not bought and most libraries have limited space to store such books, thus they go where old paper goes.

Of course some rarely lent books are important and for the one person asking for it in ten years really valuable, but many still have to go.

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infecto 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As someone who has gone to many many used book sales over decades… many of the books at a sale never get sold, guess what they usually get tossed in the dump. This includes your local library book sales. Books are heavy and worthless. Cheaper to throw away the ones that nobody picks up in a sale.

I know it comes at a shock but truly most books are absolutely worthless.

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jonhohle 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The average lifespan of a library book is 26 loans. For a popular book that could be less than a year.