Authors, archivists, historians and bibliophiles have launched an online war against tech giants and artificial intelligence developers after an increasing mountain of evidence shows they’re buying rare and antique books en masse and feeding them to large language models—only to slice off their spines and destroy the original print copies in the process.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2026/08/17/ai-companies-are-buying-and-destroying-antique-books-heres-why/
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‘Fahrenheit 451’ Must we memorize these books before the tech oligarchs put them behind a paywall and burn them? This is so dystopian, I don’t know where to begin. I won’t even put a dog-eared paperback in the trash, but donate it to a public library book sale instead. What is this world coming to? Remember the loss to history when the library at Alexandria was burned in 391 A.D.? This could be on a much larger scale.
And one day we have to hide our books? Because it is a crime to have our own source of information?
These AI CEOs need to get some Luigi…
Feeding a glorified answering machine while bankrupting our wisdom…
Wiping the physical slate clean under the guise of “progress” is a generational trap.
By shredding antique history to train AI, we are forcefully separating ourselves from our own cultural lineage.
When you lose your past, you lose your diagnosis.
We will soon find ourselves drowning in a sea of algorithms, entirely incapable of questioning the very systems keeping us blind.
They provide all the answers, but we have completely forgotten what the right questions were.
The only white elephant consolation here is anticipating that AI is even bigger than the billionaires pushing it onto us.
It will consume them as well. Not by intention, but by nature
Bro the logo.
I knew something like this was going to happen, so i have been collecting books for years. The charity stores throw them all in the bin and it is heartbreaking. Lost knowledge forever.
I found one book for $1 written in the early 1920’s, its about a British diplomat and his family from England. He knew the King, German Kaiser and Russian Tsar. He was sick and the British sent a corvette to collect him and take him to his family castle in Ireland. Amazing story and i found the book for $1.
I also have a book of poems by Tennyson. The purchaser wrote his name, address and date he bought it, in 1820. I can imagine him rushing home on a horse and reading it under candle light. Fabulous provinence. Books are full of wonder, wisdon and knowledge. Excitement, anguish, anxiety, fear, inspiration and love. To hold a hard back, dust in the pages from over the ages, sometimes a hidden note, it was a gift from Dad, or a friend. I found a JFK book in Du Pont Circle in DC while travelling in the US, the man cut out all the newspaper articles from the time and placed them inside the book. A wonderful surprise. As you can see i love books and have collections in 2 countries now.
My heart is broken. You creatures break my heart.