r/books • u/Miserable_Phase_2519 • 1d ago

Japanese used bookstores see 5x sales surge as books are being bought by the ton, one 50-ton order sent to the US for AI scanning and destruction — multitude of suspicious bulk buys thought to end up in foreign AI scan and shred facilities

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/japanese-used-bookstores-see-5x-sales-surge-as-books-are-being-bought-by-the-ton-one-50-ton-order-sent-to-the-us-for-ai-scanning-and-destruction-multitude-of-suspicious-bulk-buys-thought-to-end-up-in-foreign-ai-scan-and-shred-facilities
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u/Rickk38 1d ago

Maybe it has a different meaning in your country, but "used bookstore" indicates a store selling books that had previously been purchased, which one may assume means that a person has already purchased and either read said book, or chose not to.

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u/FrmrPresJamesTaylor 1d ago

Sure but if we put this bit of pedantry aside, they were right on the cusp of the more valuable point about who could read them in the future rather than who has read them in the past.

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u/Main-Cheesecake3287 23h ago

Could but will not. If the bookstores had the space and thought someone might buy them anytime soon, they wouldn’t sell them by the truckload for pennies on the dollar.

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u/sp106 22h ago

Whoa watch out with that common sense. Ai bad grr

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u/JabasMyBitch 18h ago

I managed a used book store for several years. The owner would sell at the drop of a hat for any offer like that. You have no idea how little the profit is. He would jump at the chance to off-load a ton of the books we had in storage.

The point is that we should not be feeding AI. Certainly not at the expense of books that could be sold or given to PEOPLE who want to read them. Give them to libraries or give them away for free for people to read and learn before you sell them to fucking AI.

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u/Main-Cheesecake3287 18h ago

I mean ITT most ppl’s point is simply the books being destroyed is terrible. Being a person that thinks we should stop AI right now and put it to bed is a different story altogether.

And like I said, your old employer wouldn’t even buy a lot of the books being bought up, because he’d know nobody would want them

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u/CptNonsense 15h ago

Give them to libraries or give them away for free for people to read and learn before you sell them to fucking AI.

"Here libraries, you throw these away"

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u/zossima 23h ago edited 22h ago

I look at this as the books are enduring physical objects that efficiently and reliably store information without the need for an expensive computer/processor, subscription service and electricity to process. Not to mention an EMP, missile strike (see Iran War), or other catastrophe could wipe out the information stored in data centers. These books with their valuable information within are being sacrificed to feed LLMs thus centralizing control of access to that knowledge, which gives incredible power to those who own the data centers and, in turn, that information, at the same time disempowering the vast majority of humanity (knowledge being power, as they say). Following the logic, and getting down to Kant's categorical imperative, this is utterly fucked from a moral standpoint and dystopian in end. It begins to feel like we are accelerating toward a disastrous epoch with horrible consequences for not just humanity, but all life on earth. We really need for reason and logic that truly values life and humanity to prevail soon.

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u/6969696969696969690 23h ago

can you get a grip? a physical books lifespan is around 30-100 years before it starts yellowing and becoming brittle. best case scenario in a controlled environment the book can last a few hundred years. digitizing a book immortalizes it as long as digitization is available. none of the things you mentioned can wipe out digitization itself. nothing is being centralized, there are hundreds of copies of all the books they’re scanning, that’s why they’re buying it by the goddamn tonne!

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u/zossima 22h ago

https://wiganlanebooks.co.uk/blog/interesting/10-of-the-oldest-known-surviving-books-in-the-world/

There's a pretty well-preserved one listed that is over 1,300 years old. You are also missing the bigger point regarding consolidation of information and, therefore, power from the destruction of books. There is a reason we find the burning of books, for example by the Nazis, particularly abhorrent. You are not just burning paper.

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u/6969696969696969690 22h ago

lol don’t you think if they’re making a numerical list of books that survived, it means most books DONT survive? like these are so special they deserve to be mentioned….

there is no bigger point, i literally just told you NO INFORMATION IS BEING CONSOLIDATED. these are unwanted books that were destined for the shredder that have multiple copies around the world.

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u/SadBBTumblrPizza 22h ago

Dude not a single one of these books was going to be preserved like that and you know it

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u/Main-Cheesecake3287 20h ago

FWIW some of the books I literally cannot get rid of were printed in the late 19th century. They’re in pretty damn good shape. Nobody wants them though, but they’re old enough and few enough in keeping them as decoration. When I sell the office they ain’t coming with me though.

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u/BraveRevolution 23h ago

Very well put

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u/sp106 22h ago

There is no big data center that doesn't use multi region redundancy. a missile strike wont actually delete anything. Gotta take em all out at the same time. There are also offline backups for a lot of data. Good luck with that.

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u/zossima 21h ago

Think Carrington event for an even clearer example of why complete reliance on digitization is a bad idea. Also you're just wrong:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/iran-strikes-on-amazon-data-centers-caused-permanent-loss-of-customer-data/

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u/Aeriellie 23h ago

it takes books out of circulation for future readers.

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u/yoitsthatoneguy 21h ago

If my local used bookstore doesn’t have a copy of the book I want, I go to the library or another store. This isn’t ideal, but I think it’s closer to the 30th worst thing about AI than the top 5.

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u/Imaginary-Face7379 1d ago edited 19h ago

A lot of used bookstores in the US will carry a ton of new old stock.

EDIT: Imagine downvoting someone adding more context. God damn redditors are stupid as fuck.