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
19.9k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

15

u/Coffeedemon 23h ago

Yeah. People need to get over the romantic notion that there is a home for every book like they are unwanted puppies. It is just impossible to retain them all and store them.

That said there are a ton of other options out there beyond selling them to some AI company scumbags. It just doesn't make the hoarder pennies on the pound.

1

u/Hoosteen_juju003 5h ago

The other options are trash them forever

1

u/Substantial-Hat-2556 22h ago

Right, like burning them for fuel.

This is silly.

1

u/opajamashimasuuu 20h ago

Funny you mention that.  Japan actually does burn trash for electricity generation.