World's largest open library calls for volunteers to scan and preserve physical books as AI companies buy, scan, and destroy them — Anna's Archive says ‘time is running out’ as ‘knowledge is permanently monopolized on private servers’
www.tomshardware.com
As AI tech companies increasingly buy and destroy books to feed to their AI models, Anna's Archive is calling for volunteers to help preserve them for the public record.

cross-posted from: https://kbin.earth/m/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com/t/3120649

As AI tech companies increasingly buy and destroy books to feed to their AI models, Anna’s Archive is calling for volunteers to help preserve them for the public record.

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
    4·
    8 小时前

    the AI ran out of Reddit slop material to scan, because reddit has been purging alot of content/accounts even suspected of spamming, so they go for physical books now.

        • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          7 小时前

          that’s what I’m saying. I’ve never understood the hoopla of reddit selling it’s corpus, aside from being fucking gross (spot on for spez) it’s a shitton of garbage. there’s gold in there, but it’s absolutely buried in shite

          • 3abas@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            7 小时前

            For an AI to troubleshoot problems with your computer (something it’s really good at today), it needs content like reddit’s. Books don’t and won’t detail weird software issues and their workarounds. One the current training set becomes irrelevant to whatever software people are running, this is a specific area where Reddit’s data is way more valuable than books.

            Of course Reddit locking down access to that information leads to fewer people contributing. Reddit is dead, it’s just struggling to go down.

            • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              6 小时前

              there’s gold in there, but it’s absolutely buried in shite

              yep, there is a lot of nuanced depth, but measured against the overall sea of chuds lol… and yep, the moment they started putting up walls and controlling the community it was doomed. it’s gonna thrash for a while then, when the only ones left are advertisers and bots, it’ll shit itself and stop twitching.

          • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
            2·
            7 小时前

            im guessing reddit has been banning so aggressively lately, that AI scraping isnt getting as much “useful data” as much anymore (chatgtp/google dropped "references for reddit in thier slop summaries). so they are trying to force logins now to keep up with the user generated content so they can squeeze every last penny they can from reddit, i dont think ads were ever a big presence in reddit? its the data. people try to post content, like posts, subreddits, those can instantly get removed by redit filters. i think lost alot of traffic recently to, which was likely AI scraping.

  • WakeUpSmashPots@lemmy.todayEnglish
    3·
    8 小时前

    I hate this timeline… It’s things like this that make me hope we actually do live in a simulation, and the devs are about to release a major bug fix…

  • melsaskca@lemmy.caEnglish
    29·
    1 天前

    I guess the next step is picking specific people to memorize specific books and pass that knowledge down to an assistant/acolyte who will keep the memories alive. Rinse and repeat. Fahrenheit 451 anybody?

  • Polisheocket@lemmy.zipEnglish
    531·
    2 天前

    Getting rid of physical copies of books so we can be monthly subscription slaves, disgusting

    • matlag@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      13·
      1 天前

      It’s worse than that. I’m sure they’re getting wet dreams about eradicating as many books as possible so that they can finally sell AI slop books at a premium price, claiming that will be “the last way to get something in [author] style!”.

      • BlindPenguin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        1 天前

        I’m rather thinking that hey want to make their slop machines the single source of truth. Much easier to get control over information, when all information is located in your own house.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    2 天前

    If you read the blog post, they don’t provide help or guidance for regular bookworms on how to scan. No information about what they expect.

    Also, flatbed scanning a whole book takes many hours. It’s one page at a time, line up each page, press the book flat and scan, for hundreds of pages.

    You’d likely need to buy, or have access to a book scanner. Which is fine, there are cheap models, but who knows if that would work for them? They don’t say. It doesn’t seem like they’re expecting help from you or me.

        • quakki@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          21·
          8 小时前

          Okay I’ll give you a hint. The bad thing about the nazis burning books wasn’t that they were destroying physical copies of books. I’ll give you a few keywords intent, selection, political control

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.worldEnglish
    631·
    2 天前

    Anna’s Archive says ‘time is running out’ as ‘knowledge is permanently monopolized on private servers’

    Not only that, of course, but easily edited. It’s a “mandala effect” generator. AKA modern gaslighting. They name the thing, point to legitimate examples, then abuse our new “understanding” to cover their crimes. 1984 indeed.

    Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia

  • RmDebArc_5@feddit.orgEnglish
    80·
    2 天前

    I love where the headline cuts of:

    knowledge is permanent - ly monopolized on private servers

        • JasonDJ@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2·
          10 小时前

          It’s been a while since I’ve seen Toy Story 3…is Al Labs run by the same guy who runs Al’s Toy Barn? Voiced by Wayne Knight (Nedry, Newman…)

        • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          8·
          2 天前

          No I know AI companies are doing that, I just don’t think they would be making gifs about it.

          But there’s a Tom Hanks movie that came out a few years ago where in the beginning of the movie he lives in a bunker because the UV index outside is so high the sunlight is basically radioactive, and he’s building a robot and he uses a machine to chop the spines off of books to feed them into a scanner to train the robot brain.

          That all takes place in the very beginning and then he leaves the bunker with the robot and some shit happens. But that’s what I thought this gif was from.

    • luciferofastora@feddit.orgEnglish
      21·
      2 天前

      Eh, perfect is the enemy of good. I’ll take the wins we can get. It’s not like having to buy the books is gonna stop the biggest offenders from burning investor money (along with the books).

      The defeat of LLMs isn’t gonna come on that front. Let the cultists believe that more words will somehow become more than words. Their silicon gods run on power and water. That’s where they’re most vulnerable.

      • LavaPlanet@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        10·
        2 天前

        It’s not necessarily trying to stop them burning the books, just stop their ability to monopolise the knowledge, that’s their aim, lock the knowledge behind a subscription, Anna’s archive will always be available for all, so why pay for their subscription if its available for free.

        • luciferofastora@feddit.orgEnglish
          1·
          22 小时前

          I was aiming for the poetic parallel between burning money and destroying books, but also, isn’t the difference between destroying the primary source and preventing access to it mostly academic? Either way, as you say, the AI grifters are looking to control that information. Once they do, the original text and knowledge might as well be lost, since we couldn’t verify anything without the original to compare to. Whether through deliberate human manipulation or random word soup mutation, they can’t ever be trusted to deliver a genuine, faithful reproduction of the contents.

          And the conclusion is the same: Better to have it freely available for everyone (including the grifters) than the grifters only.

    • qyron@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      11·
      2 天前

      I am all up for starving machine learning of new knowledge but I view this as the least friction path. Otherwise, if the machines try to brute force their entry, what harm can kt cause?

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      2·
      22 小时前

      If your local library doesn’t own a book scanner, any colleges near you may have one. You usually don’t have to be a student to walk into the library, and the book scanners I’ve used don’t require a login. YMMV on whether this is how it’s set up where you are.

      • vala@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        17 小时前

        I might try this. Im concerned that some of the books may still be under copyright. Not all of my rare books are that old. I collect indie poetry books and comics as well as old religious texts/pamphlets.

        Also concerned that some might be literally some of the only remaining copies and I really don’t want to risk damaging them.

    • tb_@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19·
      2 天前

      Those who want to conduct large-scale scans and upload many titles can reach out to the archive for support, as the archive says that it “can help pay for the scanning fees and other rewards.”

      • vala@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        7·
        2 天前

        Hmm, it’s just a few books but I do think they’re pretty rare. Not something I’m willing to send away. I wonder if a library would be willing to help?

        • njordomir@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          2 天前

          My local library has some large format scanners. I’ve considered using them to do my photo albums. I have the individual photos scanned and backed up, but the layout and margin notes are worth preserving also.

  • Smoogs@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 天前

    what does this mean AI to destroy books?

    like im a bit lost here how it is burning all books or that it rob the idea making the book worthless? why cant this part be explained plainly when you bring this topic to the table here?

    and if AI is destroying stuff, why are we being so shitty at communication?did AI destroy your ability to communicate proper meaning to others?