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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I guess the next step is picking specific people to memorize specific books and pass that knowledge down to an assistant/acolyte who will keep the memories alive. Rinse and repeat. Fahrenheit 451 anybody?
seveneves - Sonar Taxlaw
the AI ran out of Reddit slop material to scan, because reddit has been purging alot of content/accounts even suspected of spamming, so they go for physical books now.
gigo.
books are better sources imho.
pretty much why they go for books.
that’s what I’m saying. I’ve never understood the hoopla of reddit selling it’s corpus, aside from being fucking gross (spot on for spez) it’s a shitton of garbage. there’s gold in there, but it’s absolutely buried in shite
For an AI to troubleshoot problems with your computer (something it’s really good at today), it needs content like reddit’s. Books don’t and won’t detail weird software issues and their workarounds. One the current training set becomes irrelevant to whatever software people are running, this is a specific area where Reddit’s data is way more valuable than books.
Of course Reddit locking down access to that information leads to fewer people contributing. Reddit is dead, it’s just struggling to go down.
there’s gold in there, but it’s absolutely buried in shite
yep, there is a lot of nuanced depth, but measured against the overall sea of chuds lol… and yep, the moment they started putting up walls and controlling the community it was doomed. it’s gonna thrash for a while then, when the only ones left are advertisers and bots, it’ll shit itself and stop twitching.
im guessing reddit has been banning so aggressively lately, that AI scraping isnt getting as much “useful data” as much anymore (chatgtp/google dropped "references for reddit in thier slop summaries). so they are trying to force logins now to keep up with the user generated content so they can squeeze every last penny they can from reddit, i dont think ads were ever a big presence in reddit? its the data. people try to post content, like posts, subreddits, those can instantly get removed by redit filters. i think lost alot of traffic recently to, which was likely AI scraping.
hopefully it’ll push them to put up more walls and alienate the last nugget of humans using it.
Fahrenheit 451 ass
I hate this timeline… It’s things like this that make me hope we actually do live in a simulation, and the devs are about to release a major bug fix…
I have a feeling this is click bait…
The headline does not contain any clickbait-typical elements, for instance
- Most of The Words Capitalized
- A question mark at the end
- "You won’t believe’
- etc.
“Then this happened…”
What? Then WHAT happened!?
I’ll never tell… waves ads in front of
deleted by creator
Yall keep overreacting to this bs, what’s even a rare book with no other copies, every article I saw says the books were scheduled to be destroyed or taken to a dump, and those are the books they are swooping up. I have a feeling rare means like 1st edition or one with typos or some sht. These are books ppl already weren’t buying that they are grabving in mass. All knowledge and all books aren’t important, plenty of below average intelligence ppl dropping slop long before ai became a thing. Any book that you value obviously already has tons of physical copies and digital backups.
This isn’t them looting some ancient libraries/museums taking some hidden/secret knowledge from humanity like yall are making up in your heads.
every article I saw says the books were scheduled to be destroyed or taken to a dump
Do you have a source for this? Because I’ve seen literally nothing about this being the way books are being sourced. And no offense but this reads way too close to weasel words. For example: Every article I’ve read on the subject says my pants are sentient and enjoys my legs being in them. Also, I’ve read no articles on the subject so that isn’t a lie.
Fair point. Beside the point, is it technically correct to make a positive assertion about a negative thing — only because any positive assertion about that negative thing is inherently part of an empty set?
Meaning like… our logic technically rules based on “no available contradictions, even if there is no evidence” as opposed to “at least one evidence is required?”
In certain situations I’d agree that the absence of contradiction is evidence enough, but those situations are pretty specific. For example, we don’t have absolute proof that orange juice doesn’t cause cancer, our “proof” comes from the lack of reliable evidence showing that it does, along with relevant research. But that doesn’t mean every claim can be treated the same way. But that doesn’t mean every claim can be treated the same way, especially a claim based only on “every article I saw,” without a source being provided.
every article I saw says the books were scheduled to be destroyed or taken to a dump, and those are the books they are swooping up.
Sounds like propaganda to me.
Sorry, I’m having trouble understanding what you’re saying with those boots in your mouth.
Okay hero, defend us all with your words on a social media site with maybe 40,000 ppl max that do nothing, keyboard activists to the rescue
Get mad, bro. 😌
Take your feelings and shove them up your ass clanker
destroying (A) physical copy. in order to copy the (1) copy of a book(which most new already exist as pdf). kinda like how people do it when they scan the book. which has been happening for decades now to make knowledge permanent.
far cry from “destroying all books” which these rage bait titles suggest. we arent standing around a pit of fire.
bigger tragedy is how humans seem shittier at communication as AI learns. probably a more accurate title.
There are many, many non destructive scanning methods. My understanding is that most archival projects are using the non destructive options.
The easy option is to just slice off the binding and run it through a scanner.
The easy option is what is being talked about here, and those books are then fed into AI as training material. The digital copies aren’t “making knowledge permanent” as they are tucked away into a digital corner virtually no one has access to. They are as permanent as the source code for Fortnite.
If a PDF already exists, as you claim, then why go to the trouble of obtaining, destroying and scanning the books again?
There’s also Kobo… Kindle… epubs…
Not just pdfs.
Heck you can get audio books. Most books are now sold with recording.
This has been happening for decades.
Are all you people complaining here just not book readers and just here for pure out rage?
Ok? That doesn’t answer my question, if anything it makes it more obvious how you are incorrect:
If a [insert digital format name] already exists, as you claim, then why go to the trouble of obtaining, destroying, and scanning the books again?
Your response reads like there are more options than just PDF, so it’s fine to destroy the books.
They bought a copy of a book. They gonna do with it what they want. It’s their’s. Not your’s. Their’s.
You didn’t buy it. And you didn’t care about it till now. Over something you didn’t buy. Someone else did.
So now you are outraged they are making copies? This has been happening since copy machines were invented.
You’re outraged they destroyed THE ONE COPY they bought? (NOT ALL. JUST ONE)
They recycled rather than hoarded. Good for them.
This happens every day since books and other things were invented to manage unwanted junk.
If you want it go buy a copy and support the author, go for it. You want to recycle? Go for it. Both things are not illegal. Nor should they be.
I don’t get your problem here. Seems like you’re too stupid to know what to outrage about.
It’s like you discovered that dirt exists for the first time and how dare someone shovels dirt in some unmarked area you never even knew or cared existed to make a trench.
AI training is distroying books
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 are literally searching for rare books, paying premium costs for them, then cutting off their spines because it is faster to scan them that way.
Not only do they not need to destroy the books to scan them, but Google already did this 2 decades ago, and they did it non-destructively.they arent paying extra, they are buying books planned for destruction anyways?
Independent bookstores all across Europe are seeing a trend like this, where they receive random, relatively large orders that are shipped to local addresses. While orders like these still come through in the digital age, especially from institutional buyers looking to fill out new libraries, they say that most “legitimate” orders often come with coordination and negotiation, not just a straight purchase order.
I just went on and read more article of the topics people shared in the comment. That’s sounds worrying indeed but my point is more that Annans Archive appeal is very abstract in a way that it présent something that doesn’t have to be a problem in a very sensationnalising manner instead of being clear about what is whappening and what we can do.
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.
You don’t need to destroy books to scan them.
You’re very gullible.
“gullible”
hurry, you better take up reading books to learn the meaning of these words you’re using before the AI ‘destroys’ the useless copy you never wanted nor thought about until now.
There’s a bunch of dirty corporate boots that need a good licking, I’ve heard you’re just the person for the job!
Corporate called: they wanted to congratulate you on spreading your type of crazy to undermine sanity and empower them further.
Get mad, bro. 😌
All books created today exist electronically before (a copy) gets physically printed of a book that remains existing.
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.
So you have the digital source of literally any book? Literally any single book you yourself didn’t write or publish.
Because the source code for GTA6 exists, but you sure as shit don’t have it.
And how about you? Do you have the hard originals of every book? Why do you suddenly care only now that books are being copied?? They’ve been getting scanned for half a century now. You only care now to be outraged about it something for today
I don’t think that’s the argument you think it is.
The outrage is over the books being destructively scanned, en mass, and held in private after the fact. Very, very, very different than the majority of scanning which is non destructive, and usually shared.
‘En mass’
No. That’s not what that means.
They destroyed (a) copy they bought. That is not en mass.
you didn’t buy it. It’s their copy.
They didn’t destroy all copies. Go buy yourself one of you wanted it so bad. You can support the author too.
If they buy 100k books and destroy them all, even if every one is unique, that is en mass. I don’t know why I have to explain that to you, but there you go.
All those books seem to end up in goodwill eventually. What better place to gather them all for destruction.
Many should probably be distroy without training a LLM or we will get models that are aggressivly mysoginist and who verbally abuse female users, on top of every other problem they cause.
I love where the headline cuts of:
knowledge is permanent - ly monopolized on private servers
Anna’s Archive says ‘time is running out’ as ‘knowledge is permanently monopolized on private servers’
Not only that, of course, but easily edited. It’s a “mandala effect” generator. AKA modern gaslighting. They name the thing, point to legitimate examples, then abuse our new “understanding” to cover their crimes. 1984 indeed.
Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia
“mandala” effect
You sure you remember that name correctly?
Dang it, they changed it again!
Getting rid of physical copies of books so we can be monthly subscription slaves, disgusting
It’s worse than that. I’m sure they’re getting wet dreams about eradicating as many books as possible so that they can finally sell AI slop books at a premium price, claiming that will be “the last way to get something in [author] style!”.
I’m rather thinking that hey want to make their slop machines the single source of truth. Much easier to get control over information, when all information is located in your own house.
Fucking scanning books without destroying them, the philistines! /s
Is this gif from that tom hanks movie?
Yeah it’s Toy Story 3
It’s been a while since I’ve seen Toy Story 3…is Al Labs run by the same guy who runs Al’s Toy Barn? Voiced by Wayne Knight (Nedry, Newman…)
No I know AI companies are doing that, I just don’t think they would be making gifs about it.
But there’s a Tom Hanks movie that came out a few years ago where in the beginning of the movie he lives in a bunker because the UV index outside is so high the sunlight is basically radioactive, and he’s building a robot and he uses a machine to chop the spines off of books to feed them into a scanner to train the robot brain.
That all takes place in the very beginning and then he leaves the bunker with the robot and some shit happens. But that’s what I thought this gif was from.
Finch? Yeah it’s the same machine, just with a fun robot hand to make the sacrilege seem less awful, maybe?
Yeah, that sounds correct
Remember, USA and it’s AI companies did that.
texas was supppose to be filled to brim with AI datacenters, until hot wheels so his election chances diminishing, at leas until he wins again,or another R.
Ah the American dream. Be greedy, selfish and only care about yourself.
“It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it”
George Carlin, RIP
Last time I checked, no other country(apart from Russia) wanted to burn rare books and destroy the world.
also christians love a little book burning.
Well, there was that one time.in Germany. I wonder if there ate any other similarities with current US “leadership” and those guys.
Yet your countries keep helping and benefit almost like this is a global class war.
Nope, none of us are producing the kind of people and companies that would do this
This is the US. It’s peak US as well, with no other like aside from fascists or dictators
I agree about not destroying books, but Anna’s archive is ok with providing all of their info to llms
https://web.archive.org/web/20260305153357/https://annas-archive.gd/blog/llms-txt.html
Not like it’s their books to begin with. It’s all available as torrents
Eh, perfect is the enemy of good. I’ll take the wins we can get. It’s not like having to buy the books is gonna stop the biggest offenders from burning investor money (along with the books).
The defeat of LLMs isn’t gonna come on that front. Let the cultists believe that more words will somehow become more than words. Their silicon gods run on power and water. That’s where they’re most vulnerable.
It’s not necessarily trying to stop them burning the books, just stop their ability to monopolise the knowledge, that’s their aim, lock the knowledge behind a subscription, Anna’s archive will always be available for all, so why pay for their subscription if its available for free.
I was aiming for the poetic parallel between burning money and destroying books, but also, isn’t the difference between destroying the primary source and preventing access to it mostly academic? Either way, as you say, the AI grifters are looking to control that information. Once they do, the original text and knowledge might as well be lost, since we couldn’t verify anything without the original to compare to. Whether through deliberate human manipulation or random word soup mutation, they can’t ever be trusted to deliver a genuine, faithful reproduction of the contents.
And the conclusion is the same: Better to have it freely available for everyone (including the grifters) than the grifters only.
They’ll come for it at some point.
I am all up for starving machine learning of new knowledge but I view this as the least friction path. Otherwise, if the machines try to brute force their entry, what harm can kt cause?
