I am pretty sure this was in the news a few years ago and even then it was a nothing burger.
There are many and many things to rightly criticize ai companies for but to Summarize what this is about.
Anthropric buys book using real money. (Not fake ai credits like how “compute” often gets bought)
Meaning the books are now anthropics property… right?
They then destroy the cover/binding. So they can scan the individual pages easier.
I assume with no further use to the pages it all got discarded after scanning.
… that is the story.
Is it economically inefficient and wasteful? Yes. Does it feel wrong? Yes.
Should journalism instead focus on how the text data is used in context of the ai/copyright problem. Yes
Is it wrong to destroy an object that you own because it the easiest way to accomplish your project? No, that would be silly.
I am guilty myself.
I have destroyed a book in art class, My entire class did, to be made in a box, i did not even read or scan its content to save any of it. If every student of this old teacher had ever this assignment… that is a lot of books over a career.
I have destroyed generic cheap tools to make more specialized single use tools.
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