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AI companies are now destroying warehouses full of rare books
(gardinerbryant.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
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This is probably going to be an unpopular comment... but these articles are all super misleading. The physical books are getting destroyed, but their content is getting digitized. Is that a loss? Absolutely. But is there a benefit? Also yes.
The biggest loss is probably the fact that destroying the physical books removes them from circulation, making them essentially permanent additions to these companies' book collections.
What is the benifit of a book being digitized for only be used for one company training their "AI". These digitized copies aren't going to be made available to humans in any way because then the company would loose the advantage they have in training data.
And these are books that have been sitting in warehouses that haven't been able to be sold because no one wanted them. They were removed from circulation long ago.
They aren't in current circulation, not the same thing.
Not arguing that they are useful, just that sitting in a warehouse and physical destruction aren't equivalent in terms of potential use.
That's true, but sitting in a warehouse is costing someone money and I'm sure they were more than happy to sell the books even if they knew they'd eventually get destroyed.
But the other thing is, what should these companies do instead? They scraped the internet and got skewered for that. They pirated books and got in trouble for that. Now they are legally purchasing books to scan. They can't donate or sell the books since they've effectively copied the book and that would get them into piracy trouble again.
Sure, thats a possibility, I wasnt arguing otherwise.
For me, them doing sketchy and illegal shit, mostly getting away with it and then charging you for access to said ill-gotten gains is a valid reason for people to be upset at them, rage inducing, even.
That aside the equivalent of mass book burning isn't a good look regardless of legality, even less so when its the same people that did the sketchy shit before.
There is no benefit of the doubt left.
I can see how someone could get to:
"all they do is sketchy shit so even though this might look legit, let's vocally show our disdain for them and anything they are doing"
So... back to my question: what should they do instead?
What do you mean instead? why is what they are doing now insufficient ?
At this point i doubt they give a fuck what the general populace thinks, unless it affects their bottom line.
But you seem to want an answer, so let's work through the "options"
This would depend on what their goals are.
Assuming they want to continue with their track record of maximum capitalism, their best option is to eat shit, and by that i mean do whatever the fuck they want and ignore anything that isn't inline with profit/control.
Complaints from the populace, sure. Maximum profits, also yes.
If they really want to stop people complaining about them their best best would be to stop doing sketchy, illegal and unpopular things.
That wouldn't stop all complaints, this is the internet, but it would probably bring it down quite a bit.
if they wanted partially rehabilitate their image over this specific instance of terrible PR, they could:
*1,
"Environment destroying slop-machine"
&
"Useful tool in some circumstances, as long as you can personally square away the ethical and moral concerns"
aren't mutually exclusive, if this is the hill you choose to die on you're going to die mad about it.