this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2026
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World's largest open library calls for volunteers to scan and preserve physical books as AI companies buy, scan, and destroy them — Anna's Archive says ‘time is running out’ as ‘knowledge is permanent (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 1 day ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://kbin.earth/m/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com/t/3120649

As AI tech companies increasingly buy and destroy books to feed to their AI models, Anna's Archive is calling for volunteers to help preserve them for the public record.

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[–] jnod4@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They just cut and bin the books after they've been scanned, the bins are taken to the local disposal, most municipalities have a garbage dump, some burn the trash.

An ai trained on unique data is more valuable if you don't share the data it was trained on to your competition, your LLM gains an edge.

If I found a unique handwritten book from the 18th century, than I proceed to read it and memorise then burn it, I'll be the only one to posses the knowledge of it.

[–] tigermountain@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

There are very few, if any, rare, one of a kind books that would go through this process. If one of these books were scanned for an LLM it would be done delicately in a more time consuming manner and the book would be returned.