AI companies are buying tons of old books because they can use them for model training, knowing they’re not filled with AI slop.
They’re not buying a whole bunch of copies of the same book (removing the book from circulation) — they’re buying all the unique books available to OCR and include in training data, because that falls under fair use.
Fair use according to them. The court cases are ongoing. Personally I don’t see how them ingesting and commercializing is fair use.
If our government wanted to train its own AI model it already owns all the books and could just digitize the books we already have in the library. Then the AI could be free just like the library lol
Seems like an obvious solution if the government really wants to go all-in on AI: just make the LoC a training set; they could even sell access or license access if they wanted.
I like to buy print books because I hate reading on tiny screens. There’s also something about reading from a real book that feels right, the heft of it, the cover art, the occasional errors, and if used, the scars that can indicate that someone like you also cared about reading it once. It’s an experience nothing like reading a stream of bits. It’s an experience that’s probably a lot like what vinyl LP fans get from listening to their analog albums vs listening to streamed music.
If these AI companies destroy books in bulk then we’ll have fewer and fewer physical books to read and their prices will go up. They’ve been hoovering-up RAM for their datacenter computers for years and prices for RAM have been crazy high as a result, hobbling system-builders and driving up prices for consumer electronics across the board. Rare books are already expensive, and if more books become rare just because AI companies are destroying books, then all books will eventually become prohibitively expensive. We’ll then be marketed AI-generated text that we’ll be assured is “just as good” as those “old” books (we’ll also be told that “old” is undesirable and that AI-generated text is better because it’s “new” and because AI has improved the originals). Eventually the old books will disappear in any form and we’ll only have AI books.
It should go without saying that the AI texts will be polluted with pro-AI propaganda and with propaganda, overt or covert, promoting the views and best interests of the AI’s corporate owners. Every text will have within it somewhere a voice speaking for the benefit of the Sam Altmans of the world.
I like to buy print books because I hate reading on tiny screens.
I agree with you about color LCD screens. However, do you count e-ink displays as a “screen”? I find reading on e-ink, better than paper. Publishers have cut corners in the last 15 years shrinking font sizes to use fewer pages and using cheaper paper. Having dynamically adjustment of font size helps my older eyes. Additionally frontlit e-ink displays are very comfortable for me to read in lowlight conditions compared to paper relying on external light source. Lastly, the weight of an e-ink devices is a fraction of the giant 1000 page novels I keep finding myself reading. Having hundreds of those books available on my single e-ink reader is so much easier than hauling around even a couple hardbacks or paperbacks.
If I have the choice between a paper book or ebook on e-ink for regular written word books, I’ll choose ebook nearly every time.
I don’t think I’ve ever even seen an e-ink reader. In the past year I thought I’d give more e-content a try, one reason being that my public library has loads of such content available - not just books but also magazines (like Harpers say) that I used to pay good money to subscribe to. I bought a used, not-too-old tablet with an 11" screen and thought I’d be good to go. But … it weighs a lot somehow and feels awkward in hand because of that, the screen while fine otherwise (it’s a pretty nice device IMO) is not-quite-sharp-enough it feels, and I find myself constantly zooming to help with that, but doing so messes up layouts and then I find myself scrolling not only up/down but also side-to-side, a real PITA. And apart from all that, being an Android device, there are also all kinds of apps right there begging for attention while I’m trying to read. Not a good experience even if some of it is a lack of self-control on my part.
I’ll have to research the devices. I would be concerned about the content ownership issue - I want to buy my books and have them under my complete control whether on-device or on-bookshelf (not counting any content that I don’t feel the need to own, like public library content). I don’t want to give Amazon a single cent either for hardware or for content because Amazon is an evil company. And of course I don’t want to pay a ton of $ on hardware either, or find that the content is much too pricey - I almost always buy books used but will usually pay hardcover prices when I do.
Thanks for your perspective. I now have another rabbit hole to dive down.
My first eink device was the Sony PRS-500 way back in 2007. It was slow and heavy for the time, but I was instantly sold on eink. I bought a Kindle in 2012 when it was a much more open ecosystem that absorbed the Mobi ebook commercial format. A year or two ago I bought a Kindle 12th gen, but Amazon lockdown, forced ads, and DRM was finally too much and I’ve given up on Amazon for ebooks. I was able to jailbreak that 12th gen Kindle and run KORreader on it so its no longer dependent on Amazon to read DRM free books. I can always boot back into the regular Kindle app if I want to read checked out library ebooks which run on Kindle DRM. I’m pretty happy with my current solution.
There are good guides for how to select an eink ereader that will likely have more info on today’s choices for you. Eink readers measuring battery life in “weeks per charge” is something you’ll love if you’ve been reading on an LCD tablet.
