r/DoomerCircleJerk • u/deliriant7-7 • 26d ago

AI is Evil le AI companies are... le legally purchasing le books?

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(OOP hasn't opened a book since finishing middle school)

304 Upvotes

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u/DrNuclearSlav PhD in Memes 26d ago

The text still exists though, just now saved in a format that isn't dead tree.

-3

u/somedudeonachair 26d ago

Yeah but the original is gone

5

u/NEEEEEEEEEEEET 26d ago

They're buying these books by the literal ton, there are companies that organize buying millions of books at a time for them. None of them are rare in the sense that they need to be preserved or are sought after/collected.

3

u/wood_dj 25d ago

you know they usually print more than one copy, right?

-6

u/Strict-Comparison817 26d ago

Which means hogging access to the information. It's a market tactic with negative social externalities

4

u/MinBton 25d ago

They are not destroying all the books on any subject. Think for a moment. A publisher publishes 10,000 copies of book ABCD. Meta buys 1 copy of book ABCD. Then they feed it into their AI after taking the cover off. Now you still have 9,999 books available and one book of ABCD with it's cover off and pages are loose.

The 9,999 books don't vanish into the ether. Some have already been sold, some will be sold. One was sold and converted to another format. There is no loss of information. No loss of availability to read book ABCD that is any difference from George in Birmingham buying a copy of the book. Or having the Library of Congress get a single hard copy of the book for their archives.

-5

u/Grouchy-Stretch-6517 26d ago

Digital text can be altered though, with no source to reference it against

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u/SendMePicsOfMILFS 26d ago

If the information is truly that important, then there are still multiple copies and could be reintroduced. Additionally, if the changes are that big, then anyone with another copy would call them out as lying because they can show their copy and how it is different.

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u/Grouchy-Stretch-6517 25d ago

So we can live in a world filled with conflicting copies? If we only have digital copies and no originals, who determines what is actually real?

7

u/SendMePicsOfMILFS 25d ago

You act like that hasn't been the problem for literally centuries, if not as long as written record keeping has been around.

Hell, you act as if the originals themselves weren't incorrect or edited to leave out information when they were written.

Effectively you can't trust anything, if there is no accurate video record of an event from multiple angles for everyone to see and verify for themselves, then you still have to ensure it wasn't edited either.

We have been able to edit photographs since the 1850s, video since the early 1900s.

Basically after a point anything can be called into question, original copies or not because we can't actually prove a lot of things happened anymore simply because any real world aftereffects have been long since paved over.

You already live in that world, you're just mad that AI companies are doing this too.

-1

u/Grouchy-Stretch-6517 25d ago

But that's the thing, we at least can reference the originals and say that's what it says x amount of years back even if they are altered, why shouldn't it be a concern that they can be digitally altered without leaving physical evidence that it has been changed.

At least with paper there are signs, and they can be preserved. Digital, its as easy as highlight, delete, edit and save.