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.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    6 days ago

    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.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          6 days ago

          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.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            6 days ago

            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.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              6 days ago

              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.today
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            6 days ago

            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.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    6 days ago

    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…

  • dil@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    21
    ·
    edit-2
    7 days ago

    Yall keep overreacting to this bs, what’s even a rare book with no other copies, every article I saw says the books were scheduled to be destroyed or taken to a dump, and those are the books they are swooping up. I have a feeling rare means like 1st edition or one with typos or some sht. These are books ppl already weren’t buying that they are grabving in mass. All knowledge and all books aren’t important, plenty of below average intelligence ppl dropping slop long before ai became a thing. Any book that you value obviously already has tons of physical copies and digital backups.

    This isn’t them looting some ancient libraries/museums taking some hidden/secret knowledge from humanity like yall are making up in your heads.

    • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      7 days ago

      every article I saw says the books were scheduled to be destroyed or taken to a dump

      Do you have a source for this? Because I’ve seen literally nothing about this being the way books are being sourced. And no offense but this reads way too close to weasel words. For example: Every article I’ve read on the subject says my pants are sentient and enjoys my legs being in them. Also, I’ve read no articles on the subject so that isn’t a lie.

      • partofthevoice@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        7 days ago

        Fair point. Beside the point, is it technically correct to make a positive assertion about a negative thing — only because any positive assertion about that negative thing is inherently part of an empty set?

        Meaning like… our logic technically rules based on “no available contradictions, even if there is no evidence” as opposed to “at least one evidence is required?”

        • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          7 days ago

          In certain situations I’d agree that the absence of contradiction is evidence enough, but those situations are pretty specific. For example, we don’t have absolute proof that orange juice doesn’t cause cancer, our “proof” comes from the lack of reliable evidence showing that it does, along with relevant research. But that doesn’t mean every claim can be treated the same way. But that doesn’t mean every claim can be treated the same way, especially a claim based only on “every article I saw,” without a source being provided.

    • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      7 days ago

      every article I saw says the books were scheduled to be destroyed or taken to a dump, and those are the books they are swooping up.

      Sounds like propaganda to me.

  • RmDebArc_5@feddit.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    82
    ·
    8 days ago

    I love where the headline cuts of:

    knowledge is permanent - ly monopolized on private servers

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    65
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    8 days ago

    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

    • matlag@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      7 days ago

      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.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        7 days ago

        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.

        • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          7 days ago

          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.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          8 days ago

          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.

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    32
    ·
    7 days ago

    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?

    • luciferofastora@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      8 days ago

      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.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        8 days ago

        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.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          7 days ago

          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.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      8 days ago

      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?

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    8 days ago

    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.

    • tb_@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      8 days ago

      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.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        8 days ago

        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.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          13
          ·
          8 days ago

          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.

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      7 days ago

      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.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        7 days ago

        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.

        • quakki@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          6 days ago

          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

          • 5318008@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            6 days ago

            Why be condescending now?

            You already fucked up the point you were making. By all means, insult people’s intelligence at the start of the conversation, before you fuck up. Doing it at the same time as fucking up looks bad… but insults after you fuck up looks even worse.