Amazon is facing fresh scrutiny over the use of physical books for artificial intelligence training after an investigation reportedly tracked a shipment of hard-to-find titles to a company facility in Las Vegas, where workers allegedly cut the bindings from books before scanning their pages and eventually destroying them.
The investigation, reported by 404 Media, involved placing a tracking device inside a book from a large order and following its journey across the United States. The shipment ultimately reached an Amazon facility associated with an operation known as VGT3.
The discovery has raised concerns among booksellers, librarians and readers about what happens to physical books once they are acquired as potential sources of AI training data.
32 Comments
A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 41 pts · 20d
Words cannot express how much I fucking hate corporate AI
alapakala@quokk.au · 11 pts · 19d
Fascism*
Modern day book burning
quakki@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 19d
How is this in any way comparable to that? The bad thing abt nazi book burning wasnt the destruction of physical copies of books, but the destruction of knowledge and their intent behind it
alapakala@quokk.au · 1 pts · 19d
degen@midwest.social · 2 pts · 19d
I think their point is that scanning preserves the content rather than destroying it, but I'm guessing the scans aren't exactly public.
Destroying the original is flat out stupid from every angle unless it's unavoidable or destruction (or taking control) is the goal.
Honestly it might be worse if that's not the idea, but yeah it's still nazi coded at best
alapakala@quokk.au · 1 pts · 19d
Exactly.
Every fascist regime’s is.
Now that you know, what are you going to do about this?
quakki@discuss.tchncs.de · -1 pts · 18d
Very good you're close to the point. The destruction is a legal neccesity.
quakki@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 18d
alapakala@quokk.au · 1 pts · 18d
Malyca@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 19d
The same applies here
Malyca@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 19d
I'm flirting with radicalization over here
A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 19d
Was global warming not enough?
Malyca@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 19d
It should have been
A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 19d
Welcome to the movement. This is a good book to get started. I would recommend you to skip straight to chapter 1.
The Conquest of Bread
Malyca@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 19d
Thank you!
A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 19d
You are welcome :>
kyub@discuss.tchncs.de · 11 pts · 19d
It's because that might allow them to monopolize access to information later on. Your future library is called Amazon and it costs you a 100 bucks per month subscription. Plus, they can change the information displayed to you at will, as it all comes from their algorithmic black box.
Sasquatch@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 19d
First off, if my future Library of Everything is called anything other than "Alexandria", I'll be quite cross
vimmiewimmie@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 19d
Sadly, they might just call it Alexa-Libria or some sht
Malyca@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 19d
They aren't doing this to gatekeep information, they're doing this to rewrite history. Fascism cannot survive otherwise.
alapakala@quokk.au · 10 pts · 19d
And not a single person cares. Otherwise anyone would have acted
Last year
Enjoy the braindrain
Oka@sopuli.xyz · 7 pts · 20d
I feel like we're missing information from that summary:
1D10@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 19d
They never list titles or condition of the books so I just assume they are the same books you can find in big piles at the dump mostly old text books and technical books. I love books I own hundreds of them, but people don't buy enough 2nd hand books there are sites where you can buy books by the yard so you can have a neat and matching library, there are warehouses full of books to rent for movie sets. Noone realy cares they just want to be upset.
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 19d
If these LLMs are so great why do they need to destroy the books to scan them in.
My phone can scan a page and account for the curve caused by the spine but it's too much for their LLM data centers to figure out.
undefinedTruth@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 19d
Because if you get all the copies of a rare book, scan it and destroy it, then nobody else can use it for training but you. They don't have to, they choose to.
YourMomsTrashman@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 19d
According to David Gerard (youtube podcast link) they cut off the spines of the books to allow for rapid scanning
Edit: Ars Technica too, thanks alapakala
undefinedTruth@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 19d
Yes, but being the only one able to get their hands on that book and destroying it has that added benefit. My point is that there is no motivation to preserve those books, quite the opposite in fact.
1D10@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 19d
Most "rare" books exist in digital format.
undefinedTruth@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 19d
Then they are not rare by definition. These are not the books they are buying.
heartSagan5@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 19d
They're feeding it in, like a copier machine -- one sheet at a time so they lop off the binder, run the stack, and send it to the trash or furnace or wherever.
But yes, they could be doing it non-destructively, but they're being fascist-like.
alapakala@quokk.au · 2 pts · 19d
Fascism
Malyca@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 19d
It's faster, cheaper and can be automated. That's it. That's the whole reason. To avoid paying a person to do it.