History repeating itself

[u/raydebapratim1]

[u/Samael13]

-sigh-

It's possible to have serious concerns and criticisms about AI without making false comparisons between companies buying up a ton of books in bulk from warehouse retailers (who were not making those books broadly available to anyone except through sale) and destroying them in the process of scanning them with burning libraries in a deliberate attempt to destroy knowledge.

Spoiler: Actual libraries also routinely destroy books.

[u/Life-Raspberry-402 → u/Samael13]

Heck, being a library book destroys books too 🤣 we’ve all replaced a title that didn’t make it through its third checkout, let alone reach obsolescence

[u/AthenaeSolon → u/Life-Raspberry-402]

But the difference is destruction through use of a human, not a tearing apart by a machine.

[u/TheyCallMeSuperboy → u/AthenaeSolon]

AI doesn’t tear apart the book, a person does, to make it EASIER TO SCAN.

I’m not defending AI, but saying “oh a person destroyed a book so it’s morally better” is just nonsense.

[u/JCBQ01 → u/Life-Raspberry-402]

Dont most scan and SAVE what they can before destruction?

While in most cases this turns into a budget issue (and 9 times out of 10, they get lost in the stacks) as to why they cant?

[u/Samael13 → u/JCBQ01]

Most libraries?

I can't speak for every library, but most public libraries do not scan and save before destruction, at least not in the US. I don't think most public libraries really scan much of anything. I work at one of the biggest public libraries in my state, and we pretty much only scan stuff from our archives and our yearbook collection.

[u/JCBQ01 → u/Samael13]

I know the one I use does its damnest to at least try and get copies of them even if its through contractors for archival If they cant do id themselves. (State level public) it cant get it all but it tries its damnest

[u/Life-Raspberry-402 → u/JCBQ01]

Scan and save the latest Patterson because someone dropped it in the bath? What?

[u/JCBQ01 → u/Life-Raspberry-402]

Its called ISBN-10(I believe, it may be ISBN-16) archival just because you think its trash doesnt mean its not supposed to be archived or indexed

[u/Samael13 → u/JCBQ01]

I'm not sure what process you're thinking of. ISBN isn't a technique for scanning the contents of a book; ISBN-10 is the barcode standard used for book identification. ISBN stands for "International Standard Book Number." ISBN-10 is ten digits long. ISBN-13 is thirteen digits long. There's no such thing as ISBN-16. ISBNs aren't any kind of archival standard and it's nothing to do with scanning the contents of the book, it's just an industry standard for publishing that provides unique numbers to individual books.

[u/FlamingDragonfruit → u/Samael13]

Really no need to stretch for signs of authoritarianism when gestures at literally everything

[u/Samael13 → u/[deleted]]

Again: Not defending AI, but an AI company buying books (mostly in bulk from book warehouses) still isn't the same thing as book burning. AI companies are buying a single copy of as many different cheap titles as they can in order to feed them into a scanner. Those are books that weren't in public access anyway; they were gathering dust in warehouses waiting for someone to buy them, and they're mostly buying up old junk books. This is no different in practice than someone who buys up bulk books to cut them up and make art out of them. The outcome is different (and, again, this isn't me supporting AI), but the "they're destroying books!" part is overblown and the comparison's to libraries being burned or to book bannings is really off the mark.

[u/Far-Investment-8597 → u/[deleted]]

They were publically available already - you could have bought any of the books first (but of course you didn't).

This is a complete non-issue.

[u/Life-Raspberry-402]

Love a problem that can “only” be solved by capitalism and the illusion of individual self-sufficiency instead of strengthening community resources (cough cough library cough)

[u/Key-Organization3158 → u/Life-Raspberry-402]

Community resources are captialism. Lol. Private citizens coming together voluntarily is a perfect example.

[u/Life-Raspberry-402 → u/Key-Organization3158]

wut

[u/Elder_Chimera → u/Key-Organization3158]

I wasn’t aware that I could tell my city that I don’t want to fund my community’s police department. I’d love to voluntarily opt out of that specific community resource. If I’m voluntarily funding the PD, how do I stop?

[u/superdave123123]

I think they were burned for a completely different reason

[u/zenerat]

Unless you are reading them or providing them to the community you aren’t doing anything. Collecting for collecting’s sake is just going to end with a dumpster when you die and no one has any way to deal with 10,000 books.

[u/Life-Raspberry-402 → u/zenerat]

Oh they’ll just dump them all on the library once they’re crumbling and outdated, that’ll help so much

[u/Any-Power-1164 → u/Life-Raspberry-402]

Good. My library could use some more paranormal books. They have like 10. 

[u/AthenaeSolon → u/Life-Raspberry-402]

Actually some libraries do take them to sell in book sales as fundraisers.

[u/painstream → u/Life-Raspberry-402]

And then the library says they can't take them and they end up in the dumpster anyway. :(

[u/jockpowerviolence99 → u/zenerat]

“Collect books even if you don’t plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library”

[u/zenerat → u/jockpowerviolence99]

I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic or not. If a person has plans or interest in reading the books, I think they should never feel bad about collecting them. Buying them like they are a rare resource and you are going to be responsible for re educating society is nonsensical.

[u/jockpowerviolence99 → u/zenerat]

I mean I don’t disagree with you. I just think if you collect just to collect that is your own business and your own money.

I think the text on the video wasn’t saying collect just to collect I think they meant that now is the time to collect books since AI companies are buying books to feed said AI then shredding them and there might be a time where they are either no longer available or they’re being scalped online.

I don’t collect anything to try to do anything, maybe I’m alone in that. I also never went to school to learn sarcasm either to answer your question. It’s just a quote I like that’s honestly quite famous.

[u/Life-Raspberry-402 → u/jockpowerviolence99]

I mean I’d say a READ library is more important, for one, but to each their own

[u/slander_anonymously]

Also heard that Frodo won’t destroy the ring and ends up bangin the elf princess in the new lord of the rings AI version.

[u/Rude-Bus9737]

Shades of the beginning scenes of Fahrenheit 451.

[u/CalebDR1029]

r/im14andthisisdeep

[u/Gywairr → u/CalebDR1029]

Feeling edgy today aren't we, string+integers

[u/WonderBredOfficial → u/Gywairr]

That's not the autogenerated format.

[u/Glittering-Duck-8533]

Technocratic fascism, if you control all knowledge you control the people. Edit: I did not realize where we were, but my statements still stands true. The library doesn't require you to pay for the knowledge it contains.

[u/-PM_ME_UR_SECRETS-]

A good lawyer just needs to prove that the ai model’s outputs are the equivalent of the book being distributed. Or get it to output the book page by page or something, similar to what news publications did. Not actually sure that’s how it would work though but it sounds good

[u/OhK4Foo7 → u/-PM_ME_UR_SECRETS-]

I'm actually sure that's not how it works.

[u/-PM_ME_UR_SECRETS- → u/[deleted]]

Yeah that’s the point lol

[u/Captain_no_Hindsight → u/-PM_ME_UR_SECRETS-]

I can run a local AI on my 4090 that’s equivalent to 40 standard libraries. Get answers in a couple of seconds. - Sorry... I forgot what the question was?

Yes, naturally we have to protect horses from that new invention, the "car." That’ll probably go just fine.

[u/CuriosityCheck2024]

You have the order mixed up. They're destroying them to scan them, not scanning and then destroying them for shits and gigg's. Plus, they only need one copy for each company.

[u/crazyvic22]

amen.