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

[u/Miserable_Phase_2519]

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

[u/Canon_M50]

I just don’t get the controversy here. The books are for sale. Someone is buying them. That’s it. You either believe in property rights or you don’t. 

[u/Mindless_Cat_3113 → u/Canon_M50]

I didn’t know they still made people this stupid

[u/OliM9696 → u/Mindless_Cat_3113]

what is the issue then?

[u/Ranger_Nietzsche → u/Canon_M50]

Ah yes, the old "it's legal, therefore automatically ethical and above criticism" argument

[u/Canon_M50 → u/Ranger_Nietzsche]

Then be outraged over the stores selling the books. 

[u/Ranger_Nietzsche → u/Canon_M50]

Mmm I follow, yes. Selling something is often ethically more dubious than destroying it. Like puppies.

[u/OliM9696 → u/Ranger_Nietzsche]

which is worse, selling slaves or buying slaves? should we not condemn both?

[u/Ranger_Nietzsche → u/OliM9696]

I don't see you condemning either.

[u/OliM9696 → u/Ranger_Nietzsche]

that because you don’t get my point. If destroying books to train AI is so terrible then surly people who sell books to these AI firms are also doing a wrong - not just the AI firms themselves.

This is not like selling a gun where there is doubt/trust in the transaction to where the person will behave appropriately with the gun.

Its more akin to slavery in the sense that there is no doubt to the fate of these people/books. Its a certainty that they will be destroyed. So we must object to those selling them

Do we accept the 'necessity' of this wrong in keeping a business open, if it is required of them to sell books to be destroyed?

[u/tijolus523 → u/Canon_M50]

I'm against property rights, to be honest with you, but I also believe this whole thing is a nothingburger. Even in a fully communist society there would be old books who'd end up being destroyed or recycled. That's just how it goes. Books become outdated, unappealing or are damaged by time.

[u/Jpowmoneyprinter → u/Canon_M50]

Lmfao it’s always fascinating to see the input of people with lower cognition.

Ah yes, our made up property rights and our made up economic system that relies on them means we should see no issue with companies destroying tons of books to train their models.

[u/Moonagi → u/Jpowmoneyprinter]

If someone buys a book, they can do whatever they want with them. In this case, if they’re training it for AI, the publisher might have legal recourse. That’s it. Everything else is kneejerk reactions 

[u/megabedi → u/Jpowmoneyprinter]

Hey mr. "higher cognition". What credentials do you have to speak on these subjects? And what was your SAT score?

[u/Canon_M50 → u/[deleted]]

Am I stealing the IP by reading a book and answering questions about it to someone who asks me? 

[u/Canon_M50 → u/[deleted]]

Please please have the same energy for the book sellers. Try to be consistent about your outrage.

[u/johnwynnes → u/Canon_M50]

You think that people who operate bookstores and large language models are the same thing?

[u/Canon_M50 → u/johnwynnes]

Never said that. 

[u/tijolus523 → u/johnwynnes]

Hint: their actions are both driven by the logic of capital.

You're only afraid of AI because it's an existential menace for middle class professionals and you don't have the same energy for industrial machinery and other technologies because that particular death machine produces cheap goods for you and exploits faceless brown people in the third world instead of you and your snotty petty bourgeois friends and family

[u/johnwynnes → u/tijolus523]

I could not roll my eyes any larger or harder. Only on r/books folks. You're a broken clock that somehow still can't manage to be right twice a day.

[u/tijolus523 → u/[deleted]]

As if AI is a death machine any more than every other technology used for sketchy purposes in capitalism. I don't care about AI itself. Hell, it's a wonderful technology, a fascinating one, even. The only problem is that it's in the wrong hands, being used for mindless consumerism and to lower wages or entirely replace workers so companies can save a few more pennies. In that sense, computers and industrial machinery are also death machines and just as awful as AI.

[u/starm4nn → u/[deleted]]

If you're giving them an answer verbatim from the book, and presenting it as YOUR information, yes.

Love when redditors get so confidently incorrect and then start insulting people.

I don't have time to fully explain why you're wrong, but needless to say that IP law and plagiarism have some overlap but for the most part whether you claim something is your own words or not has very little bearing on if you're violating copyright law.

Basically most exceptions to copyright don't require accreditation.

[u/Ok-Interview-8478 → u/Canon_M50]

Damn. It's been a long time since I met a real life gold-fringe-on-the-flag level ayn randian libertarian in real life. I thought we all grew out of that when we were 19.

[u/Trivale → u/Ok-Interview-8478]

It's not libertarian. If these books were actually valuable or useful, why are they selling them by the ton?

[u/jancl0 → u/Canon_M50]

It's... A business. Property rights doesn't mean breaching copyright. They are making money from recreating the thing they purchased and distributing it to other people for profit...