TL;DR: AI companies are secretly buying, scanning, and destroying millions of physical books to train their models, permanently locking human knowledge inside private corporate servers. Anna’s Archive is urgently calling on volunteers worldwide to scan and upload books before this cultural heritage disappears forever.
My understanding is, by buying them. But that does not mean they have to do the same. They are filthy rich, they can afford to rebind and donate the books.
But donate them to whom? The books were one step away from the pulpers when they bought them in the first place, who’s going to take them that values them more than that?
Also, these companies are not charities. What do they gain out of all that extra expense?
AI companies are filthy rich (at our expense).
They can afford to donate books.
Once again: “capitalism” is not the answer.