In the filings, Anthropic states, as reported by the Washington Post: “Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world. We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.”

https://archive.ph/HiESW

  • ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    That much was absolutely is something to get worked up about. Just because it happens more than people realize, that doesn’t make it okay.

      • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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        6 months ago

        Sure, but it is rather a waste of paper, ink, manufacturing and transportation capacity etc. It’s not the only instance of this of course, waste of unsold inventory exists in just about any industry that sells physical products, but it’s still frustrating to see it.

          • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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            6 months ago

            I wouldn’t say print books have no place today, it can’t be assumed that one will have access to electronics in all circumstances after all and many people do prefer physical media, but it’s definitely an indictment of the sort of cheaply made basically disposable books made in larger quantities than needed to fill their current niche, and of the way unwanted (by their owners) but usable goods are dealt with in general.

            • smh@slrpnk.net
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              6 months ago

              Even teenagers sometimes prefer dead tree books to ebooks. Back when I worked in a public library, we could tell when a book was assigned reading because we’d suddenly get 10 requests for our 2 copies. The students had access to the ebook, they just preferred paper.

      • ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        I didn’t say words were sacred, but destroying millions of books is a colossal waste of resources. This is not totally fine.