From Bookshelf to Shredder: AI’s Race for Training Data Is Responsible for Destroying Rare and Antique Books

At this point, you’re probably used to hearing all about AI and how it's constantly hungry for more information, right? Industry leaders are desperate to get their hands on any and every piece of high-quality data to better train their increasingly sophisticated systems. Well, now it looks like they’ve taken that desperation to the next level.

Booksellers all over Australia, Europe, and the United Kingdom have started reporting weird bulk orders for thousands of obscure titles. The buyers aren’t identifying themselves, and they aren’t reading the books or selling them on. Instead, they’re scanning the books so they can be digitized, fed into AI systems, and then pulped into mush.