AI companies are now destroying warehouses full of rare books

Dash just ruined my night by sending me this news article. It documents the obscene depravity that AI companies are up to; an ol' fashioned book burning. A bonfire to sate the whims of an unfeeling, unthinking AI idol.What's happening is pretty simple: AI companies are going around and purchasing tons of rare books. Then, they're slicing the spine off these books, scanning every page, and then pulping the remains. This is unequivocally, inarguably the systematic, industrialized destruction of culture.Describing it is one thing. Seeing it first hand is another. If this doesn't crush your soul, nothing will. Both dash and I have a lot to say about this, but we'll keep it brief.AI is not destroying rare books. We are.Saying "AI is destroying books" is a bad idea for many reasons:First, it frames LLMs (AI models) as having agency or like it's capable of making decisions. Let's be clear: they are not.Second, blaming AI itself distracts us from the culprit of these crimes: the AI companies.…