AI Is Buying Books to Destroy Them

Here’s the news: companies linked to the development of artificial intelligence are buying large quantities of printed books, sometimes through intermediaries who promise anonymity, to scan them and turn them into training data. And in some documented operations, the scanning isn’t gentle. The spine is cut, the pages are separated, they’re run through high-speed machines, and the physical book is destroyed. The image is powerful, almost too easy: machines learning from books while making them disappear. But if we focus only on that image, we miss what matters most. This isn’t just about destroying paper. It’s about who controls the written record when it becomes fuel for private models.

Full episode: https://youtu.be/fT488zngaaA

🤖 AI-generated content: The script, voices, and images for this episode were produced using artificial intelligence tools.

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