So apparently #AI companies are buying old books at secondhand bookstores which aren't yet available in digital form, scan them in to feed their models, and then shred the books afterwards.

#books #bookstodon
https://www.tagesschau.de/kultur/ki-firmen-antiquarische-buecher-100.html

@juergen_hubert "It includes a scanner that reads individual pages of books at high speed. These pages were previously removed from bound books."

Other, non-destructive, scanning technologies exist, such as that used to create the Cambridge Library Collection. But the process costs more.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/publications/collections/cambridge-library-collection

@TimWardCam

And these organizations do not care about the physical books themselves, merely the information within.

@juergen_hubert I can assure you that CUP cared about the physical books - the University Library wanted them back undamaged.