Mastodawn

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."
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-millions-of-print-books-to-build-its-ai-models/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

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Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE 1d ago

@arstechnica It's not necessary to do this. Machines are available that can scan books without damaging them.

As used for these, for example: https://www.cambridge.org/core/publications/collections/cambridge-library-collection

The machines aren't cheap, mind, and need careful handling.

Cambridge Library Collection

Welcome to Cambridge Core

Cambridge Core

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Roy -- the dull one 1d ago

@TimWardCam @arstechnica

I'm afraid that you, like me, need reprogramming in order to reside in the 21st Century.

A bias against destroying things is so, so out of fashion.

To begin your readjustment, write this on the blackboard 535 times:

I MUST MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS.

There, now, don't you feel more... more... more "modern"?

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Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE 1d ago

@oldclumsy_nowmad @arstechnica Yeah, our kids were like that. They even treated things like bicycles as temporary and disposable, whereas we treated them as serious pieces of capital equipment.

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Roy -- the dull one 1d ago

@TimWardCam @arstechnica

Thanks for speaking out in favor of respect for books (and other things that are investments of human and natural resources).

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Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

@oldclumsy_nowmad @arstechnica I'm married to a publisher.

But I was always brought up to respect books. To the extent that the one or two times in my life that I've thrown a book away because it was so crap I didn't want to inflict it on anyone else felt like a very strange thing to do.