Anthropic bought up and then sent ~2 million books into recycling - all for the sake of training its AI models
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ISBNdb buys huge amounts of old books (up to 1 million copies in one deal) for AI companies. Buyers are hiding behind NDAs. We don't know the names, but an old Anthropic project, Panama, has surfaced.
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Here's the essence of Panama:
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They bought tons of printed books from the used book stores.
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They used a hydraulic cutter to “carefully cut off” the spines.
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They scanned the pages using high-speed industrial equipment.
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They sent the originals to the 'waste paper bin'.
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Rare and unique editions that could not be reprinted went under the knife along with the trashy self-help drivel. Legally, this may be called “fair use” (as the courts might see it), but morally, it is the destruction of the elements of our culture.
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Destroying books destroys memory. Memory (a living, complex experience) turns into Data (an impersonal feed for AI). Based on Data, AI creates artificial #Thought. Thus, Thought (partially) ceases to belong to humans, and if there is no thought, then "you no longer can influence tomorrow."
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Books, which were once a shield and a storage of memory, now become fuel for a machine that learns to 'generate ideas'.
