Here’s a balm if the idea of destroying books to train AI breaks your heart
AI companies are reportedly purchasing rare books in bulk, likely to use them as training data, and are facing pushback from booksellers who object to the practice. The resistance reflects growing concern about how the AI industry sources the content it uses to build its models.
Why this matters: Rare books are not just data. They are often one-of-a-kind or nearly so, and buying them up to feed into a training pipeline means they may end up destroyed or digitized and gone. Booksellers are pushing back, which matters because the AI industry has largely helped itself to written work without much friction. This is a case where the people closest to the source material are drawing a line. Whether that line holds is a different question.
Who should care: General readers · AI governance · Policy
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