Rare and valuable books are not going to be in the giant pallets AI companies are buying. Most public libraries do not have professional archivists or anything like that, not so charity shops, or booksellers.

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runarberg 7 hours ago | parent [-]

No, but they are going to be intermixed in boxes from an old estate, or a used books store which is closing up, etc.

> Most public libraries do not have professional archivists

Most reasonably sized library systems do in fact. Even small ones have trained librarians with an some degree in library science who took at least an introductory class in archiving as a part of their degree, and very likely has some idea how to prevent rare books from being destroyed.

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tptacek 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Right, and what happens to those boxes from old estates are that they get put into dumpsters. The only difference here are:

* It's happening on a much smaller scale

* They're actually digitizing the books before they destroy them

This obviously isn't about the books. It's about people want reasons not to like AI companies.

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runarberg 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The scale matters. It is disingenuous to just remove it from the equation as if it doesn’t.

As does the intention matter. The AI companies are doing this because they want to profit off of it. They don’t have to do this, and the fact that they do is part of what makes them bad for humanity.

	▲	tptacek 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Right: the scale matters, which is why it's very weird to take AI companies to task for something the public library system does on a far greater scale. And, in fact, the AI companies do have to do this: they're required by law to destroy these books.