Anthropic Destroyed Millions of Print Books to Build Its AI Models
Anthropic Destroyed Millions of Print Books to Build Its AI Models
Company hired Google’s book-scanning chief to cut up and digitize “all the books in the world.”…
To be honest, I dont really blame Anthropic for this.
The prior ruling against The Internet Archive that made it so they couldnt archive digital copies of books effectively has made it so companies like Anthropic must do it this way.
So I blame the shitty courts for the very stupid ruling.
Things can be immoral without being illegal.
They chose to destroy these books, because it would have been more expensive to non-destructively scan them.
They also chose to simply trash the loose pages after they were done with them.
C'mon bubble, pop already
So they bought one copy of millions of different books and cut them off in the process of scanning them?
I mean... ok?
It would have been nicer to not cut them off and donate them after, but I wonder if in US copyright that would have made them less likely to get a pass. Here's hoping they recycled the paper, at least.
Despite what publishers would like you to think, it's not illegal to sell or donate used books.
however in doing so they would no longer be making a backup copy and instead just making an actual copy.
The content is 403 for me. I imagine these are copies, and not rares or one of a kinds.
You would hope so, but I am not so sure.
Edit: here’s a snapshot for you: https://archive.is/pBkPrFrom the article:
The court documents don't indicate that any rare books were destroyed in this process—Anthropic purchased its books in bulk from major retailers
Even if every book had copies readily available, trashing millions of books is immensely wasteful.
People decry mass book burnings, but when tech bros do the same shit, they don't even blink.
I didn't say it was a good thing