On: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

[mjdv]

They're scans. Those are human-readable. They probably won't make them available to the public, which is the exact same state they would be in if they bought the books and just put them on a bookshelf in a warehouse.

[alightsoul → mjdv]

That was due to negligence. Now it is profitable to keep the books private, and actively deny others access to them.

[ceasesurthinko → alightsoul]

Ah, yes, because we all know OpenAI and Anthropic are famously just front operations for the high-end antiquarian book trade.

[merely-unlikely → ceasesurthinko]

High-end antiquarian book traders is a genuinely hilarious way to describe them and I shall refer to them as such henceforth.

[alightsoul → ceasesurthinko]

That's an in house operation that benefits them, not a front.