Hundreds of Thousands of Tons of Books Landfilled Annually: AI Training as a Better Alternative
aronchick · x · 2026-07-29
Pushing back against recent reports framing AI companies as destroying books for training data, @WKCosmo offers a different perspective.
He points out that hundreds of thousands of tons of obsolete books are sent to landfills or pulped annually in the US. Because publishers restrict digital archiving, these books are often lost forever. He argues that diverting these otherwise trashed books for AI training is actually a positive outcome, criticizing the media for crafting rage-bait and clarifying that no one is shredding rare, valuable manuscripts.
Related event: AI Training Sparks Debate Over 640K Tons of Landfilled Books(2 posts)→
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