The issue presented raises moral and legal questions about the training of AI

BBC News

Secondhand book sales are booming. Is it because of AI?

Booksellers are reporting mysterious bulk orders. It's thought the books are being used to train AI - and ending up pulped.

I wonder also what Ray Bradbury would have made of it (Fahrenheit 451) ?

Edited August 15Aug 15 by studiot

Well, this a bit of on the nose for a metaphor, isn't it? Also very fitting given where things are headed.

I do hope the AI algorithm makes certain which books are fact and which are fiction!

Ars Technica ran a story the other day about how 404 Media connected with a bookseller who agreed to plant an Airtag in a rare book that was part of a bulk order.

Ars Technica

Hidden Airtag reveals Amazon is trashing rare books to tr...

Amazon’s team uses a T. rex preparing to devour a book as its logo.

That Airtag was then tracked to an Amazon AI training facility in Las Vegas that housed a team focused on tearing books from their spines and scanning pages, 404 Media reported. Apparently tone-deaf to the escalating backlash over destructive book scanning, a logo on the door of that team’s warehouse, VGT3, showed a Tyrannosaurus rex preparing to devour a book, 404 Media documented.

Amazon have declined to comment beyond stating :

“Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use,”

Scanning books into Ai learning would be great: preserving the sum of human knowledge. Like Wikipedia.

But these are closed systems. Companies control and monetize it.

Authors are the musicians that do the work and the record label is the Ai company that profits.

44 minutes ago, Trurl said:

Scanning books into Ai learning would be great: preserving the sum of human knowledge. Like Wikipedia.

But these are closed systems. Companies control and monetize it.

Authors are the musicians that do the work and the record label is the Ai company that profits.

I have also another fear. If only digital copies exist, they can be manipulated en masse. If there are no outside preserved records, historic research as we know it would be at an end. It might take a few tokens, but rewriting history (and literature) would be in reach.

5 hours ago, Trurl said:

Scanning books into Ai learning would be great: preserving the sum of human knowledge. Like Wikipedia.

But these are closed systems. Companies control and monetize it.

Authors are the musicians that do the work and the record label is the Ai company that profits.

Like the analogy. +1

5 hours ago, CharonY said:

I have also another fear. If only digital copies exist, they can be manipulated en masse. If there are no outside preserved records, historic research as we know it would be at an end. It might take a few tokens, but rewriting history (and literature) would be in reach.

Remember the end of Fahrenheit 451 ?

7 hours ago, studiot said:

Remember the end of Fahrenheit 451 ?

Yes, but considering that our attention span is getting so short I have little hope for that.

21 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Yes, but considering that our attention span is getting so short I have little hope for that.

I'm sorry, remind me again what you just said.

😄

Whut? The only thing I remember is that folks who destroy books are usually the bad guys.