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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.