New Yorker probes Anthropic's 'destructive' book scanning as mystery LLCs swamp booksellers
matdryhurst · x · 2026-09-20
A New Yorker feature investigates Anthropic's push to "destructively scan all the books in the world" for AI training. Since early 2026, independent booksellers like Brooklyn's James Payne Books and Prints have seen bizarre bulk orders — jumping from fewer than ten Alibris sales a year to batches of ten books at $75-80 each — while Toronto dealer Sylvia Petras watched niche scholarly titles fly off the shelves. The buyers aren't individuals but cryptic LLCs such as Green Parrot Project and Red Sparrow Project. The piece asks how worried we should be about dismantling physical books to build models; commenter matdryhurst argues the real scandal is that public libraries aren't archiving books into weights themselves.
Related event: Anthropic's Mass Book-Scanning Project for Claude Training Exposed(2 posts)→
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