One of the stories of the last few weeks has been that AI companies have been scanning books in very large numbers in order to train their models with content guaranteed to have been written before 2002, and thus AI free.
Jenny List for Hackaday writes: In this case they’re destroying the books for two reasons. Firstly, as I remember from a previous employer in the publishing world, it’s much easier to digitise a stack of papers than it is a bound book. Thus I’m pretty sure that’s one reason they remove the binding before digitising the pages. Then secondly, as I understand it, it’s a copyright issue. If they buy a book, digitise it, and destroy the physical copy, they can legitimately claim that only one copy of it exists, and they hope, sidestep copyright claims from publishers.
Perhaps the most pertinent question then is just what are the books being scanned and destroyed? They’re almost universally described as “rare”, but is that accurate or sensationalist? It brings to mind a dusty library filled with priceless tomes hand-transcribed by monks which it would be a crime to destroy, but there’s something that explodes that vision in an instant.
If you read the reports of what’s happening, they are ordering books by ISBN number. That’s an international system for identifying books, which was only introduced in 1970. If they’re ordering a book by its ISBN, it’s no medieval illuminated manuscript.
See more on Hackaday.
— Source: Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — Read More
