2 months ago
- AI/LLM companies are buying, scanning, and destroying rare physical books at an unprecedented scale to train their models.
- Physical books published before 2021 are considered the last reliable source of human-written text, as later content may be AI-generated.
- The destruction of rare books raises ethical concerns about hoarding knowledge behind walled gardens, reminiscent of dystopian novels like Fahrenheit 451 and 1984.
- Scanned books are kept in private databases, not publicly accessible, risking censorship and loss of impartial access to history.
- Actions to preserve knowledge include buying and holding paper books, which cannot be revoked or monetized, and resisting the subscription-based model.
- The situation is not yet fully dystopian, but it marks a concerning trend of knowledge collection, segregation, and protection by tech companies.