There’s also the question of the removal of important cultural works from circulation if this trend continues. Another moral question concerns the use of copyrighted works for AI learning . This is still legal in Japan, unless it can be demonstrated that the scanning unfairly harms the interests of the copyright holder. With underhand bulk operations like these, it isn’t likely anyone will be asked for permission about their book being scanned.
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ezst036 I never favor book destruction. However, being book stores the likelihood of old and rare one of a kind books being destroyed could probably be lower. What I mean is, If book X by author Y is printed a million times and then 200,000 of those copies get destroyed by AI shredders, I mean this is not good. But there still is 800k of them left. If rare book A by author B only has three copies left and two are destroyed by AI shredders, this is panic inducing. A/B and X/Y are clearly different scenarios on practically entirely different planets. Most of the book store I see favor the new books. But it is true that older ones and especially rare ones will get caught up in the fray, which is sad. Reply
Rabohinf George Orwell certainly did not foresee the destruction of printed matter and the editing of the texts to rewrite history, did he. Reply
PEnns One day in the near future humanity, or whatever is left of it, will have no printed books. But hey, we will have AI to vibe code, create deadly weaponry, hack into anything they're not supposed to and create AI girlfriends for the vibe-coders. Reply
JamesJones44 ezst036 said: I never favor book destruction. However, being book stores the likelihood of old and rare one of a kind books being destroyed could probably be lower. What I mean is, If book X by author Y is printed a million times and then 200,000 of those copies get destroyed by AI shredders, I mean this is not good. But there still is 800k of them left. If rare book A by author B only has three copies left and two are destroyed by AI shredders, this is panic inducing. A/B and X/Y are clearly different scenarios on practically entirely different planets. Most of the book store I see favor the new books. But it is true that older ones and especially rare ones will get caught up in the fray, which is sad. Unfortunately, it's likely they will work to destroy as many copies as they can get up to that 800k example. Then they are the gate keepers of that knowledge and you must come to them Reply
vinay2070 PEnns said: One day in the near future humanity, or whatever is left of it, will have no printed books. But hey, we will have AI to vibe code, create deadly weaponry, hack into anything they're not supposed to and create AI girlfriends for the vibe-coders. All for what? To keep shareholders happy and keep ahead of competition(instead of collabrating for safe AI development). Sad world. Reply
vinay2070 JamesJones44 said: Unfortunately, it's likely they will work to destroy as many copies as they can get up to that 800k example. Then they are the gate keepers of that knowledge and you must come to them What if AI takes over? Then we dont even have access to them. All permanently lost. Reply
razor512 Rabohinf said: George Orwell certainly did not foresee the destruction of printed matter and the editing of the texts to rewrite history, did he. For these issues, you can thank the draconian piracy laws, to avoid getting sued, the easiest way is to establish a process where a book is scanned, and then destroyed. Then one digital copy is maintained for the AI training. While most regular users can get away with some violations, e.g., it is unlikely that you will get sued for taking a DVD containing an old movie that you like, and copying it to your plex server. From various court cases, it was accepted to be transformative "fair use" by ensuring that there was a one for one replacement, where steps were taken to ensure that a single copy digital replacement for each analog book would be maintained, thus they are using the digital version the same way a physical book would be used, just instead of a human reading it, an AI is reading it during training. Overall, companies like Anthropic were financially punished for pirating books, but the practice of scanning and destroying the original, and only maintaining as many digital copies as they had physical copies, was accepted as fair use, thus we are now seeing trends of companies buying up vast amounts of books, only to scan and destroy them, and ensure no additional copies are made of the digital book. One of the major rulings on this behavior: https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/california/candce/3:2024cv05417/434709/231/0.pdf?ts=1750837198 https://i.imgur.com/Gw7BNBY.png Overall, even in a court district most favorable to copyright holders, destroying the physical book was enough to render it transformative fair use. Reply
bill001g It is already getting close to young people asking if a book is some kind of paper tablet. For years out of greed publishers of books have gone to the concept of rental with things like kindle. They no longer have the huge costs to print and ship physical books but they could sell/rent copies for almost the same price as the physical books. Colleges not liking the fact that students could resell their used text books and the college did not get a cut started to offer rental of electronic copies. They pretended it was going to save the student money when it was really a way to reduce the number of used books available. They are now yelling and screaming because someone that runs AI data centers found a loophole in the copyright that allow them to be more greedy than they were. Although end authors are the real losers with AI replacing the creating of new content the publishers are the ones who lose what I consider money they did little to earn off the authors work. The new question will be if the human authors can create content for cheaper than the AI. The AI company must recover the massive costs of the data centers and the electricity and that be recovered in the end product "books" that it creates. People are stupid thinking they can create stuff for free using AI. The AI companies are like drug dealers giving away free samples hoping they can hook people/companies and they can raise the prices to pay back all the fools who currently are risking crazy borrowed money on paying for data centers and electricity. Reply
Zaranthos The fact that so many books have seemingly never been digitized and electronically preserved already is even more shocking. I'd rather they be gobbled up and stored by AI than destroyed in a fire or end up in a landfill due to water damage from mold or some other natural destruction that happens a lot. Maybe some governments should create legislation to either preserve the books by hand scanning them, or make the digital versions available online forever for free if they're not under copyright. Reply
Samlebon2306 Rabohinf said: George Orwell certainly did not foresee the destruction of printed matter and the editing of the texts to rewrite history, did he. That's my thought. Book shredding is the modern way of burning them. Burning books was the most efficient way to erase history and culture. The difference is the content gets digested by AI to ultimately curate and control reality. Maybe one day the future generations won't even notice the books ever existed. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/japanese-used-bookstores-see-5x-sales-surge-as-books-are-being-bought-by-the-ton-one-50-ton-order-sent-to-the-us-for-ai-scanning-and-destruction-multitude-of-suspicious-bulk-buys-thought-to-end-up-in-foreign-ai-scan-and-shred-facilities#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/membership
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- British Columbia sues OpenAI and Sam Altman for 'aiding and abetting' school shooter
- China swiped classified F-35 stealth fighter parts that were diverted through Hong Kong
- Japanese used bookstores see 5x sales surge as books are being bought by the ton, one 50-ton order sent to the US for AI scanning and destruction
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