RetroFed
AI companies are now destroying warehouses full of rare books
Lemmit.Online bothttps://gardinerbryant.com/ai-companies-are-now-destroying-warehouses-full-of-rare-books/
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The original was posted on /r/technology by /u/HumbleRestaurant790 on 2026-07-29 09:23:08+00:00.
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TrackinDaKrakenNot AI Companies, but billionaires. They have names, they’re people, and we shouldn’t let them hide behind “company”. These are some of the people fucking us all over for nothing but their own hubris. They have too much power and money, they’re delusional, and they need to be taxed, regulated, and stopped:
Sam Altman, Open AI
Sundar Pichai, Alphabet, Google
Clay Magouyrk, Oracle
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta, Facebook
FiniteBanjoIt would be slightly less horrrible if they released the digitized books online, or even just paid archivist organizations to carefully do the job for them and make public the works to then train on.
But no. They choose the worst way to do everything.
And worse if you do it to benefit humanity (see: internet archive) they’ll sue you into oblivion or come for your neck. Even mobsters benefited their communities somewhat while doing heinous things.
wonderingwandererWelcome to capitalism…
Except this is different. That book burning was due to ideological reasons. This one is due to pure greed and disregard for collective knowledge
You’re right, it is different, the AI companies are misled into thinking this will generate some sort of profit but the Chinese were just doing it from a place of pure malice.
Putting the slightest chance of profits over the conservation of rare books is also pure malice in my book. With a layer of makeup.
So you’re arguing that capitalism and its greed are not an ideology?
Of course it’s an ideology, but it’s the ideology that enables the greed. The greed would exist with or without it.
When billionaire oligarchs destroy the planet and people’s lives in order to make themselves richer, they’re not doing it on ideological ground. Most of them don’t care about ideology. Their ideology is just how they brainwash the public into voting for politicians who will help them continue to dominate the economy.
There’s no legitimate purpose for destroying these books.
There are non-invasive ways scan books. But the destruction is an added bonus. These companies make a copy of these public domain books and then pulp the remains. They’re rare, so that means they’re hard to find (that’s what rare means, after all).
Then, they can turn around and sell their dataset to AI companies.
The destruction is the point.
Capitalism always creates perverse incentives. The most profitable thing you can do is seize something readily available and make it impossible to get without paying you.
But which companies are doing this? It sounds like these are companies that supply training data to AI companies. I think we need names.
I misread that as:
The most profitable thing you can do is seize someone readily available […]
… and realized that also tracks.
They destroy them to comply with fair use laws. A judge in San Francisco ruled this practice as fair use.
vext01Not nice to see books being destroyed, but this part, I’m sure, will upset people:
Lastly, and most importantly, if you use these AI chatbots, you are complicit.
For some people the choice to use a bot or not is a choice of having the job, or not.
Leonbut this part, I’m sure, will upset people
I don’t know that that’s a bad thing. If you use these models, you are complicit; you’re part of creating the “need” for these models. You don’t necessarily have a choice (because realistically losing your job and all the stuff that entails isn’t a real choice, and that’s fully part of how the system is intended to work), but you’re still complicit.
We as individuals don’t have a lot of power, because power is mostly tied to some kind of capital. That’s why working together is so important, because it’s only by working together we’ll have any real power to impact things.
I don’t think being upset is a bad thing. Recognise it, and do something about it. It could be something small like talking to colleagues about it, or contacting a union representative, or a politician. Or go big, no shame in that either.
It’s complicity under duress, essentially. Which is shitty in a few different directions.
Exactly, it’s built on systemic violence, in that when you don’t have a job you’re rendered more or less useless to society and left to wither by the wayside. Thus it is in the individuals immediate best interest to keep working with, thus enforcing these systems.
Worrying about anything beyond the immediate is for those with means, unfortunately.
I live in Sweden. I grew up a povvo bitch, but I’ve managed to do well for myself over the years. Even so, I don’t have anything to fall back on. If I lost my job I’d luckily have unemployment, through my union and various labour rights, but that too has a limit.
I get why people wouldn’t want to fight back, which is what leads to doomerism and wishes to just burn the entire system to the ground in the hopes of building something better next time. Which I get too, I feel that all the time; improvement seems unlikely given the perpetual decline I’ve witnessed my entire life. Even so, I contact politicians, and I engage with my union.
improvement seems unlikely given the perpetual decline I’ve witnessed my entire life
To be fair, I’m sure there were plenty of people who lived in the late Roman, late Byzantine, and late Ottoman empires who felt the same way.
PerfectDark"For some people the choice to use a bot or not is a choice of having the job, or not."
That would be Gardiner’s side of the article. I contributed by wroting two sections on this one:
- The Shadow of Fahrenheit 451, and
- “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
Just to explain whose take is whose for this little article, at least.
its silly, i use a phone but i dont want it made with child labor. there is no need to destroy the books.
For some people the choice to use a bot or not is a choice of having the job, or not.
Going to work for yourself is always an option. Ask any street busker. Insinuating it isn’t is your complicity.
I’m sure people with dependents, a mortgage , rent to pay, debt to clear, etc. would be thrilled with your suggestion.
Oh dear. The consequences of ones own choices. It’s almost like you’re trying to dictate the creature comforts of your cell, not eliminate the imprisonment entirely.
Maybe you should think real hard about the asymmetry in your position.
“Daddy, why can’t we eat dinner this week?”
Listen up sweetie, Daddy had to leave his job because they wanted him to use Claude to generate a spreadsheet. It was the only way to destroy our billionaire overlords from the inside. You’ll thank me when you’re older, now keep packing your things, we have until Friday before the landlord calls the police to forcibly evict us.
“Daddy, why does everyone work until they die? Why is the sky filled with satellite debris? Why is the water poison? Why are there no more winters?”
“Well, Daddy needs a paycheck because Daddy was prioritizing creature comforts and sold himself into wage slavery. Daddy’s been voting in favor of Corporatist entrenchment for decades. Daddy would rather have his Amazon Prime than be uncomfortable living without his consumerist devices to distract him from what his choices are doing to the planet.”
“Daddy’s also been selling your eyeballs to advertisers since before you could form coherent thoughts because he’d rather let the iPad babysit you than be a real parent. Daddy’s too busy doomscrolling Pornhub.”
Jo MiranAnd they are providing the OCR’d text free of charge to the masses, right? Right?
ClippyFahrenheit 451
That and the ending (V for Vendetta) were the sections I wrote in this article. Because as soon as I saw the news, it was all I could think of :(
I’ve read somewhere that it has to do with copyright, i.e. if you destroy the original, then it’s not a copy and therefore allowed
No, it’s far cheaper to scan a stack of loose papers than it is to scan a bound book, that’s why they’re cutting the pages out. And most of the books aren’t that valuable, even if they’re rare. So it’s an accounting decision to destroy the books.
But hey at least in return we get insecure buggy slop software and soulless facsimiles of art!
And the ring that kills me is how disingenious the whole ai thing is. It’s not really artificial intelligence, it’s basically really really fast computing. And I hate that they have named absolutely everything computer related “AI”. Please, it’s not fucking AI, not in the true sense of the word
They didn’t just start
People have been talking about this for months.
It’s really getting old how many people are starting to act like trump. And just assume if they just heard about something, no one else has.
It sounds like a minor thing, but it’s a huge red flag that people don’t have base levels of empathy.
For every person who has heard about it, there are many more who have not. It’s important to have these conversations so that we as a society can make decisions about what we value; only when a critical mass of individuals have awareness can we work together toward common goals.
Yeah. And you can easily phrase a headline like that…
That it had been going on for a while and people should pay attention…
But they didn’t.
Which is why I mentioned it.
Edit:
For example:
https://lemmy.world/post/50060570?scrollToComments=true
There is a difference between headlines, and it shouldn’t be surprising the major network is more professional and accurate than a blog.
ValmondAny examples of those rare books?
Edit: of course not, what an absolute shit article. “If you don’t dislike trashing a book you’re a bad person!!!” Basically. What an ignorant idea. The article linked in the first “article” (the first contains 0 information) isn’t much better, large companies buy books nobody wants, scans them and discards them.
Guess what librarians worldwide do? Well they don’t scan the books before sending them for recycling.
So an overly emotional trash headline to generate that sweet anger and engagement IMO.
Still plenty to be pissed about though. As someone who does archiving it’s still enraging because they are destroying thousands of books not for archival where you destroy one copy to provide access to all, but to copy the book, rewrite it, and sell it back to you.
There’s now less copies of said book, it wasn’t archived, they stole that content, and are now selling it back to you. People will then take this stolen content and act like it’s something they created and then try to turn profit. It makes every copyright argument the publishers have ever made look like a joke. Why do publishing companies even exist?
They have a video in the article showing some books being destroyed (although, granted, dictionaries are not “rare” but I’m sure some rare texts have been destroyed in this process).
And as others have pointed out, they could easily publish the digital copies for other uses as a preservation measure.
The video also was shit, you won’t scan that book when you cut that much off. I bet the video has absolutely nothing to do with it all, as it seems to be not at all recycling, but cutting books. Cutting books needs those expensive machines in the video (you use that when making books), not to pulp stuff.
Where did you get the idea that these were only books that no-one cared about? I re-read the article and didn’t find anything where they specified the type of rare books collected, scanned and destroyed
In the title of this post for starters, but even if it’s true, the post is just ragebait crap.
CovertOperativeThe first time I heard about this was from this article: https://www.srf.ch/kultur/gesellschaft-religion/jagd-auf-alte-buecher-ki-firmen-kaufen-antiquariate-leer-und-vernichten-die-buecher
A translated quote from it:
“Not rarities, but the exact opposite,” the dealer reports: “What specifically was bought were nonfiction titles from 1970 onward with ISBN numbers—dusty, unsold stock that no one had wanted for years. Resale is completely out of the question: The books are worthless, and for each title only exactly one copy was purchased.”
That article still tries to frame this as “Rare antique books are going to be lost forever”.
❌ Destroying the books
✔️ ...to fully digitize them
❌ ...and hoard the data in their systems
How do they manage to screw things twice in a row?
This is probably going to be an unpopular comment… but these articles are all super misleading. The physical books are getting destroyed, but their content is getting digitized. Is that a loss? Absolutely. But is there a benefit? Also yes.
The biggest loss is probably the fact that destroying the physical books removes them from circulation, making them essentially permanent additions to these companies’ book collections.
What is the benifit of a book being digitized for only be used for one company training their “AI”. These digitized copies aren’t going to be made available to humans in any way because then the company would loose the advantage they have in training data.
The biggest loss is probably the fact that destroying the physical books removes them from circulation
And these are books that have been sitting in warehouses that haven’t been able to be sold because no one wanted them. They were removed from circulation long ago.
They aren’t in current circulation, not the same thing.
Not arguing that they are useful, just that sitting in a warehouse and physical destruction aren’t equivalent in terms of potential use.
That’s true, but sitting in a warehouse is costing someone money and I’m sure they were more than happy to sell the books even if they knew they’d eventually get destroyed.
But the other thing is, what should these companies do instead? They scraped the internet and got skewered for that. They pirated books and got in trouble for that. Now they are legally purchasing books to scan. They can’t donate or sell the books since they’ve effectively copied the book and that would get them into piracy trouble again.
That’s true, but sitting in a warehouse is costing someone money and I’m sure they were more than happy to sell the books even if they knew they’d eventually get destroyed.
Sure, thats a possibility, I wasnt arguing otherwise.
But the other thing is, what should these companies do instead? They scraped the internet and got skewered for that. They pirated books and got in trouble for that. Now they are legally purchasing books to scan.
For me, them doing sketchy and illegal shit, mostly getting away with it and then charging you for access to said ill-gotten gains is a valid reason for people to be upset at them, rage inducing, even.
That aside the equivalent of mass book burning isn’t a good look regardless of legality, even less so when its the same people that did the sketchy shit before.
There is no benefit of the doubt left.
I can see how someone could get to:
“all they do is sketchy shit so even though this might look legit, let’s vocally show our disdain for them and anything they are doing”
So… back to my question: what should they do instead?
What do you mean instead? why is what they are doing now insufficient ?
At this point i doubt they give a fuck what the general populace thinks, unless it affects their bottom line.
But you seem to want an answer, so let’s work through the “options”
This would depend on what their goals are.
Assuming they want to continue with their track record of maximum capitalism, their best option is to eat shit, and by that i mean do whatever the fuck they want and ignore anything that isn’t inline with profit/control.
Complaints from the populace, sure. Maximum profits, also yes.
If they really want to stop people complaining about them their best best would be to stop doing sketchy, illegal and unpopular things.
That wouldn’t stop all complaints, this is the internet, but it would probably bring it down quite a bit.
if they wanted partially rehabilitate their image over this specific instance of terrible PR, they could:
Release the data of the scanned books directly.
- if they can afford the lobbying and legal costs to ignore copyright for their environment destroying slop-machines*1, they can probably afford the same for straight up releasing the scans.
Use any of the myriad of non-destructive means of scanning books + release the books in to the wild after
- More expensive, requires you to do something with the intact books after
- See the previous comment about the affordability of lobbying/legal fees
Not do this at all
*1,
“Environment destroying slop-machine”
&
“Useful tool in some circumstances, as long as you can personally square away the ethical and moral concerns”
aren’t mutually exclusive, if this is the hill you choose to die on you’re going to die mad about it.
If they were truely “rare” books, then the owner wouldn’t have sold it to an AI company. People who collect rare books are usually very choosy about who they sell them to. Now I don’t like them destroying books in general, but I suspect the word rare in this article is likely not what most people would actually call rare.
iktDAMNIT
The original article was on the australian news corp website, so it’s probably not true and/or exaggerated but anyway
ha ha ai bad
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