Anthropic destroyed millions of physical books to train its AI, court documents reveal

[Squid Surprise]

False, at least in the sense of "have to". The Internet archive has custom rigs that scan the pages from the book directly, without tearing it apart.

https://archive.org/scanning

When a relative died a few years ago, we donated their books to IA. They sent a van around to pick them up, very convenient (of course, the relative lived only a few dozen miles from the headquarters; others might not have quite the same experience).

Still costs more and takes WAY longer than “destroying” a book…
When you’re scanning MILLIONS of books, every minute and dollar saved MATTERS.

And while the book is “destroyed”, this isn’t a book burning like the destruction of the library of Alexandria… the contents are all immortalized digitally - not to mention, obviously, that there are multiple copies of these books available elsewhere…

 

[Kotters]

False, at least in the sense of "have to". The Internet archive has custom rigs that scan the pages from the book directly, without tearing it apart.

https://archive.org/scanning

When a relative died a few years ago, we donated their books to IA. They sent a van around to pick them up, very convenient (of course, the relative lived only a few dozen miles from the headquarters; others might not have quite the same experience).

Yeah.