Lamenting the Books

Friends of the Earth International. CC BY-SA 2.0 image via Wikimedia Commons. I feel like I’m in mourning. Reading my friend Dirk’s post yesterday, I learned about the generative AI crowds’ bulk purchase and destruction of printed, often rare, books to train their models.1 Buy the books, take them apart, scan and then pulp ‘em: good riddance, but thanks for the words. I don’t know why this discovery has come as such a shock; after all, today’s tech world was built on the infamous directive to move fast and break things, with no concern for who or what gets hurt in the process. And I also don’t know why I’m stunned that there are apparently people who see the practice as opportunity to make a quick buck; in addition to the AI companies themselves, go-betweens have been accused of making these goons’ purchases for them, to keep sellers (or a variety of others, probably with objections like my own) from knowing the fate of those bound volumes. They realize this cover-up is key; as the…