<![CDATA[AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books]]>Artificial intelligence labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale.

ISBNdb notes that “print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination”.

“Millions of the most valuable books have never been digitised. They exist only in physical form, scattered across library shelves, used bookstores, and out-of-print catalogues. We get them to you at scale.”

]]>https://citiverse.it/topic/b46fa746-89f9-4105-9e39-33c28a1f8ae1/ai-labs-buy-scan-shred-millions-of-rare-booksRSS for NodeTue, 18 Aug 2026 10:30:43 GMTTue, 28 Jul 2026 19:31:26 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books on Wed, 29 Jul 2026 17:39:31 GMT]]>
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Book burning - Wikipedia

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(en.wikipedia.org)

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.ml/comment/26965470https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.ml/comment/26965470Wed, 29 Jul 2026 17:39:31 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books on Wed, 29 Jul 2026 03:37:01 GMT]]>This is great!

All the bad advice in those poorly-edited "For Dummies" books gets to live on.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.world/comment/25011880https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.world/comment/25011880Wed, 29 Jul 2026 03:37:01 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books on Wed, 29 Jul 2026 03:30:52 GMT]]>My thoughts exactly! And more concise than I could have put it!

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.zip/comment/27911074https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.zip/comment/27911074Wed, 29 Jul 2026 03:30:52 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books on Wed, 29 Jul 2026 02:05:47 GMT]]>this kills two birds with one stone, it compiles data for the hallucination machine and it destroys irreplaceable knowledge so people will be left with no substitute to the hallucination machine.

on top of art being completely ruined, we're now getting to the point where nobody can actually know anything with any certainty.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.ml/comment/26953149https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.ml/comment/26953149Wed, 29 Jul 2026 02:05:47 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books on Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:20:03 GMT]]>Probably for exclucivity or something.

Similar to stories of orchid pickers way back when destroying the habitats afterward for exclusivity.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.ml/comment/26951837https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.ml/comment/26951837Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:20:03 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books on Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:16:26 GMT]]>A small blue brick with a strange marking on it was found, "NØKÍÁ". When a button was pressed a screen lit up with a young blond female and pink hyroglyphics "HANNAH MONTANA LINUX FOR NOKIA 2026". On it, an instance of Minecraft with a library unlocked keys to the past as archeologists roamed a pixelated landscape as an avatar named Rahul.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://beehaw.org/comment/6080921https://citiverse.it/post/https://beehaw.org/comment/6080921Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:16:26 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books on Tue, 28 Jul 2026 23:35:44 GMT]]>Just donate the books for a tax break or sell them at a discount. The destruction has a level of cruelty equal to restaurants poisoning their surplus food in the garbage.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/27321598https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/27321598Tue, 28 Jul 2026 23:35:44 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books on Tue, 28 Jul 2026 22:19:15 GMT]]>Picks up a clay-tablet, and starts chiseling:

*"As the archeologist wandered around he found basically nothing other rectangular plates. A clay-tablet hinted this layer should have been part of an information rich age, a so called 'digital age'. Somehow there was no evidence to be found other than rectangles in all shapes, sizes and composition. Not only for that time period, but surprisingly also a thousand years prior to that... *

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.ml/comment/26950136https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.ml/comment/26950136Tue, 28 Jul 2026 22:19:15 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books on Tue, 28 Jul 2026 22:38:21 GMT]]>paired with trying their best to close resources like anna's archive, we are watching these fucks burn the library of alexandria we built on the internet.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.ml/comment/26949991https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.ml/comment/26949991Tue, 28 Jul 2026 22:38:21 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books on Tue, 28 Jul 2026 21:44:29 GMT]]>It's like all of these companies had a starting point of "How can we be as evil as we possibly can be" and then they workshop until they run into insane shit like this.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://sh.itjust.works/comment/26617668https://citiverse.it/post/https://sh.itjust.works/comment/26617668Tue, 28 Jul 2026 21:44:29 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books on Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:52:24 GMT]]>This should make everyone sick to their stomach

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.ml/comment/26948645https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.ml/comment/26948645Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:52:24 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books on Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:16:23 GMT]]>This should make anyone who loves books sick to their stomach.

]]>https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.world/comment/25006180https://citiverse.it/post/https://lemmy.world/comment/25006180Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:16:23 GMT