- cross-posted to:
- piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
cross-posted from: https://kbin.earth/m/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com/t/3120649
As AI tech companies increasingly buy and destroy books to feed to their AI models, Anna’s Archive is calling for volunteers to help preserve them for the public record.
You must log in or register to comment.
These AI companies are just being Nazis, books on pyres…again.
If you read the blog post, they don’t provide help or guidance for regular bookworms on how to scan. No information about what they expect.
Also, flatbed scanning a whole book takes many hours. It’s one page at a time, line up each page, press the book flat and scan, for hundreds of pages.
You’d likely need to buy, or have access to a book scanner. Which is fine, there are cheap models, but who knows if that would work for them? They don’t say. It doesn’t seem like they’re expecting help from you or me.
With modern phones having a document scan option with our phone cameras, is it possible we can scan and combine into a PDF file?
I am going to test it myself, see how easy it is, and find a way to ensure anyone can follow with low cognitive load, but hopefully it’s as easy as I think to do.
The sad part, is to do so would require a slow tedious task for books with hundreds of pages. It would be nice to see a large group tackle chunks at a time to the point we eventually have groups dedicated to genres and scouring to find them to preserve them.
Getting rid of physical copies of books so we can be monthly subscription slaves, disgusting
deleted by creator
I own some rare books but no book scanner. What should I do?
If you’ve got some comfort with tinkering:
Super outdated and the guide doesn’t work
Those who want to conduct large-scale scans and upload many titles can reach out to the archive for support, as the archive says that it “can help pay for the scanning fees and other rewards.”
Hmm, it’s just a few books but I do think they’re pretty rare. Not something I’m willing to send away. I wonder if a library would be willing to help?
My local library has some large format scanners. I’ve considered using them to do my photo albums. I have the individual photos scanned and backed up, but the layout and margin notes are worth preserving also.
Anna’s Archive says ‘time is running out’ as ‘knowledge is permanently monopolized on private servers’
Not only that, of course, but easily edited. It’s a “mandala effect” generator. AKA modern gaslighting. They name the thing, point to legitimate examples, then abuse our new “understanding” to cover their crimes. 1984 indeed.
Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia
I agree about not destroying books, but Anna’s archive is ok with providing all of their info to llms
https://web.archive.org/web/20260305153357/https://annas-archive.gd/blog/llms-txt.html
Eh, perfect is the enemy of good. I’ll take the wins we can get. It’s not like having to buy the books is gonna stop the biggest offenders from burning investor money (along with the books).
The defeat of LLMs isn’t gonna come on that front. Let the cultists believe that more words will somehow become more than words. Their silicon gods run on power and water. That’s where they’re most vulnerable.
It’s not necessarily trying to stop them burning the books, just stop their ability to monopolise the knowledge, that’s their aim, lock the knowledge behind a subscription, Anna’s archive will always be available for all, so why pay for their subscription if its available for free.
Not like it’s their books to begin with. It’s all available as torrents
I am all up for starving machine learning of new knowledge but I view this as the least friction path. Otherwise, if the machines try to brute force their entry, what harm can kt cause?
Fucking scanning books without destroying them, the philistines! /s
Is this gif from that tom hanks movie?
Yeah it’s Toy Story 3
No I know AI companies are doing that, I just don’t think they would be making gifs about it.
But there’s a Tom Hanks movie that came out a few years ago where in the beginning of the movie he lives in a bunker because the UV index outside is so high the sunlight is basically radioactive, and he’s building a robot and he uses a machine to chop the spines off of books to feed them into a scanner to train the robot brain.
That all takes place in the very beginning and then he leaves the bunker with the robot and some shit happens. But that’s what I thought this gif was from.
Finch? Yeah it’s the same machine, just with a fun robot hand to make the sacrilege seem less awful, maybe?
Yeah, that sounds correct
I love where the headline cuts of:
knowledge is permanent - ly monopolized on private servers
They’re destroying everything like locusts
Remember, USA and it’s AI companies did that.
Ah the American dream. Be greedy, selfish and only care about yourself.
“It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it”
Last time I checked, no other country(apart from Russia) wanted to burn rare books and destroy the world.
Well, there was that one time.in Germany. I wonder if there ate any other similarities with current US “leadership” and those guys.
Yet your countries keep helping and benefit almost like this is a global class war.
Any reputable orgs I can donate to for assisting the cause? I just don’t feel I have the means otherwise to make a dent in the buying and preservation.
Perhaps there is a public library in your area that accepts donations? The one I live by is STARVING for support, they accept books, old computers, anything.
They do good work for the community too, like free tech literacy classes, chess for kids, etc.
But if you are dead set on an online NGO, then maybe archive.org? You have probably heard about their Wayback Machine, but they preserve books and other media too.
Ahh, good call. On it. Thanks!
Okay, but aren’t there more than 1 copy of the books they get their hands on? Or do they steal from museums?
Allegedly, it’s the rare, “undesirable” prints - the ones that just didn’t sell? Again, allegedly. But where’s a title disclosure?
So, my question is, of all these books being scanned and then destroyed, aren’t there many more copies of these books? And BTW, knowledge isn’t permanent. It can be lost.
If you had clicked on the article before commenting instead of just reading the headline, you’d have seen that it was truncated on the lemmy post
And if you had read the small number of other comments before commenting instead of just reading the headline, you’d have seen this correction already be posted: https://lemmy.world/comment/25456917
When someone can’t answer a question a common response to change the subject. Do you have an answer to my question?
They just cut and bin the books after they’ve been scanned, the bins are taken to the local disposal, most municipalities have a garbage dump, some burn the trash.
An ai trained on unique data is more valuable if you don’t share the data it was trained on to your competition, your LLM gains an edge.
If I found a unique handwritten book from the 18th century, than I proceed to read it and memorise then burn it, I’ll be the only one to posses the knowledge of it.
There are very few, if any, rare, one of a kind books that would go through this process. If one of these books were scanned for an LLM it would be done delicately in a more time consuming manner and the book would be returned.
