this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2026
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Every time I hear that claim it sounds weird to me. You can't say that without an explanation.
Sure, scanning a print copy can mean distroying it but a book as a work still exist. We are very far from having scanned every books which physical copy are numerous. If AI trains on every romance novel published in the 80's, it is far from distroying books by distroying physical copy.
Now if AI company are searching for rare books to scan and distroy, it is much more worrying but finding rare editions or print copies of books is a trade and the normal citizen can't jumps in to save the day.
They're destroying things that don't have to be destroyed and compiling the information into privately owned megastructures they'll then charge us to access while we own nothing and they can then alter the books.
Nah I'm good. Everything these AI companies stand for is fucking evil and malicious.
For every AI that researches a legit medical issue, they start literally burning fucking books, replacing jobs, screwing basically everyone, and making the world overall much worse.
If you can't see why these companies destroying any amount of books is bad, idk how to help you. Maybe look up a list of who has ever mass destroyed books. There's not a lot of good people there.
Humans have been scanning books for decades. All books created today exist electronically before (a copy) gets physically printed of a book that remains existing.
Type writers are a museum piece. not a utility anymore. Calm down.
Not really. There is a lot of full manuscrit books made to this day. By scholar in region where electricity is not as much available. By student compile hand-written notes from oral teaching. By people composing small things for family and friends or just for themselves. By activist and locally involed people making just on or a few copy to be share in physicial Space around them.
That's a huge part of what exist outside the publishing industry.
And we used copiers and voice recorders for that since before computers. That has been used since the 70s. Even earlier.
scanning that and adding it to the common knowledge and making it accessible is something we've been doing since computers were a thing decades before today.
Students now still use recordings that can be parsed into text.
Suddenly it's an issue now because someone needs so badly to be outraged by literally everything that can be distorted into a rage bait title like this one.