The gravest societal concerns are the erosion of copyright and licensing norms, program secrecy, and the risk that rare or last-surviving volumes are permanently destroyed.
Yesterday I read with fury about the AI book purchases and the destruction of rare books to feed it. Then, I sat and allowed my mind and actual knowledge to consider it.
What is it? Theater! Nothing but theater.
Lazy for sure. Redundant as well. For more than a hundred years we have made copies of published materials. Perhaps many of you are too young to remember microfilm to view newspapers in the library? Microfiche, a partner in that technology. This means that the conversion of printed material to digital files is not ‘new’ technology. The AI video showing a book’s spine being cut off in order to feed it into the tray to copy it? Theater. And laziness.
I would point out that research in any serious library means you can view rare books without opening the rare book itself. When you are allowed to view the actual book? You wear Gloves and rest it in a cradle to preserve it. This chopping and destruction is just drama and it destroys something that may prove to have value to scholars in a later age.
Next, you can buy a Kindle and have books available to you. They are already in digitized format. The Guttenberg Project has a massive base of older, out-of-print books. Every academic paper I receive includes a bibliography - and I can access those volumes on-line as well.
Could Anthropic and the others pay some of these institutions and simply copy the books? Of course they can. But it is more theatrical and lazy to chop up more.
What then was the purpose? Not academic in any real form. Merely another attention-grabbing event. Whatever law there is about copyright and so forth must surely have been explored with the introduction of the original technologies. And to ignore other sourcing? Purely lazy and without a general sense of value. To hack up books that are considered rare? Enormously idiotic. To infringe on the future of research? Childish and superficial. These ‘AI’ scholars (?) try to appear scientific and simply are not. The material is everywhere around them and they simply turn their heads and play at the appearance.
I have cited a few sources, I know there are many I have overlooked. Isn’t it time to stop mindless adoration of silly effort?
If AI is to thrive and show value, then respect for the sources must become a part of this.
Thank you for sharing your views. Claude produced this response: "The comment is broadly right that Anthropic bought and destructively scanned millions of physical books to train Claude, but it is wrong on the single most important detail: the destroyed books were not "rare" books — Judge Alsup's order describes ordinary, bulk-purchased, "often used" print copies, and no title-level evidence has ever surfaced of a rare, unique, or last-surviving book being destroyed (an MLQ News fact-check concluded "the reviewed documentation does not identify a verified rare title that an AI company purchased and destroyed"). The "rare books" framing comes from a July 2026 viral social-media thread, not the court record.
The comment's assumption that copyright "must surely have been explored" is also mistaken: applying copyright/fair use to AI training was a genuinely novel, unsettled legal question — the June 23, 2025 Alsup ruling was the first substantive US decision on it, and it split the baby (destructive scanning of purchased books = fair use; training = fair use; use of pirated copies = infringement, leading to a record $1.5 billion settlement finally approved July 20, 2026).
The comment's proposed alternatives (Kindle/ebooks, Project Gutenberg, "just pay and copy") are weaker than they sound — DRM/licensing bars ebooks, Gutenberg is public-domain-only and too small, and blanket licensing at training scale barely existed — but its core normative point ("respect for the sources") is fair and increasingly reflected in emerging licensing norms."
Thank you for Claude's defense. I refer you to the information posted - and that included rare books. The issue of redundancy remains. Many other sources available - and thus? Lazy remains a factor. It is mostly demonstrative of 'speed' of action. And still the reality is that other methods might be reviewed and not the simple act as seen at present. And the alternatives are weaker - but still can be considered possibilities. At present, the only one tested is the mass destruction plan. I do not see it going forward without serious regulatory oversight. There are other uses for AI, and 'training' by this method seems a bit tenuous. And will that apply to art works? to musical works? to other creative endeavors? I expect AI to defend itself - I expect that we enact restraint on its investors and parent companies.
Yesterday I read with fury about the AI book purchases and the destruction of rare books to feed it. Then, I sat and allowed my mind and actual knowledge to consider it.
What is it? Theater! Nothing but theater.
Lazy for sure. Redundant as well. For more than a hundred years we have made copies of published materials. Perhaps many of you are too young to remember microfilm to view newspapers in the library? Microfiche, a partner in that technology. This means that the conversion of printed material to digital files is not ‘new’ technology. The AI video showing a book’s spine being cut off in order to feed it into the tray to copy it? Theater. And laziness.
I would point out that research in any serious library means you can view rare books without opening the rare book itself. When you are allowed to view the actual book? You wear Gloves and rest it in a cradle to preserve it. This chopping and destruction is just drama and it destroys something that may prove to have value to scholars in a later age.
Next, you can buy a Kindle and have books available to you. They are already in digitized format. The Guttenberg Project has a massive base of older, out-of-print books. Every academic paper I receive includes a bibliography - and I can access those volumes on-line as well.
Could Anthropic and the others pay some of these institutions and simply copy the books? Of course they can. But it is more theatrical and lazy to chop up more.
What then was the purpose? Not academic in any real form. Merely another attention-grabbing event. Whatever law there is about copyright and so forth must surely have been explored with the introduction of the original technologies. And to ignore other sourcing? Purely lazy and without a general sense of value. To hack up books that are considered rare? Enormously idiotic. To infringe on the future of research? Childish and superficial. These ‘AI’ scholars (?) try to appear scientific and simply are not. The material is everywhere around them and they simply turn their heads and play at the appearance.
I have cited a few sources, I know there are many I have overlooked. Isn’t it time to stop mindless adoration of silly effort?
If AI is to thrive and show value, then respect for the sources must become a part of this.
Thank you for sharing your views. Claude produced this response: "The comment is broadly right that Anthropic bought and destructively scanned millions of physical books to train Claude, but it is wrong on the single most important detail: the destroyed books were not "rare" books — Judge Alsup's order describes ordinary, bulk-purchased, "often used" print copies, and no title-level evidence has ever surfaced of a rare, unique, or last-surviving book being destroyed (an MLQ News fact-check concluded "the reviewed documentation does not identify a verified rare title that an AI company purchased and destroyed"). The "rare books" framing comes from a July 2026 viral social-media thread, not the court record.
The comment's assumption that copyright "must surely have been explored" is also mistaken: applying copyright/fair use to AI training was a genuinely novel, unsettled legal question — the June 23, 2025 Alsup ruling was the first substantive US decision on it, and it split the baby (destructive scanning of purchased books = fair use; training = fair use; use of pirated copies = infringement, leading to a record $1.5 billion settlement finally approved July 20, 2026).
The comment's proposed alternatives (Kindle/ebooks, Project Gutenberg, "just pay and copy") are weaker than they sound — DRM/licensing bars ebooks, Gutenberg is public-domain-only and too small, and blanket licensing at training scale barely existed — but its core normative point ("respect for the sources") is fair and increasingly reflected in emerging licensing norms."
Thank you for Claude's defense. I refer you to the information posted - and that included rare books. The issue of redundancy remains. Many other sources available - and thus? Lazy remains a factor. It is mostly demonstrative of 'speed' of action. And still the reality is that other methods might be reviewed and not the simple act as seen at present. And the alternatives are weaker - but still can be considered possibilities. At present, the only one tested is the mass destruction plan. I do not see it going forward without serious regulatory oversight. There are other uses for AI, and 'training' by this method seems a bit tenuous. And will that apply to art works? to musical works? to other creative endeavors? I expect AI to defend itself - I expect that we enact restraint on its investors and parent companies.