World's largest open library calls for volunteers to scan and preserve physical books as AI companies buy, scan, and destroy them — Anna's Archive says ‘time is running out’ as ‘knowledge is permanently monopolized on private servers’
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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.

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.

  • Wireless Dirk@ani.socialEnglish
    5·
    8 hours ago

    the problem is also that in “modern” books (like 50s, 60s, 70’s and so on) these books themselves also tend to decay and just crumble after a time, due to some sort of process they do to the paper to create it. In order to truly preserve them you’d almost need like some sort of conditioned environment with the same temperature, no sunlight, stuff like that. Its a shame really, then again nothing in the world was meant to last forever.

    • SabinStargem@lemmy.todayEnglish
      6·
      6 hours ago

      I encourage the conversion of books to digital formats, it is just that the method here is shortsighted. The physical copies can be useful if something goes wrong, and can be appreciated by some humans after the digital archival has redundancy.

      • Wireless Dirk@ani.socialEnglish
        3·
        6 hours ago

        true, if history has taught us anything its that archiving is important. and digital archiving is also very important. its just that well there could be a future were people don’t even know how to read out all these digital devices anymore. and then they’ll be back in the stoneage.