this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books (www.news.com.au)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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.”

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[–] bold_atlas@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

"Book burning is good actually because no one reads them"

Summarized by biological human intelligence

Typical fucking anti-human attitude. If it doesn't make money then it's useless.

You do know that books (the majority in existence probably) aren't meant to be sold or read by the general public but? Like historical ledgers, accident inquiries, patents, scientific findings, family trees, weather data?

[–] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 weeks ago

Seriously, what the fuck are you talking about?

I'm sorry you didnt know the vast majority of unsold books are destroyed and recycled into something else. What did you think we did with them? No one wants to store 10'000 unsold copies of Robert Holms, "The straight circle"

What they're buying are the cheapest literature they can find. Old unsold books no one wanted for decades.

There's not a single scientific finding we have not digitalised, which you can buy the originals of. We've digitalised every single patent filed. Ever.

And weather data? Seriously? You think they're buying weather data published on paper only? Where do you even buy that?