AI companies destroy physical books — let's scan rare books before it's too late
Summary
An Anna's Archive guest post alleges that AI firms are secretly acquiring, scanning, and destroying physical books to train models, risking the loss of publicly available knowledge. The piece highlights Anthropics' Project Panama and calls for volunteers to scan and upload books to a shadow library to preserve humanity's literature before it vanishes. It frames a moral conflict between AI progress and access to cultural heritage, urging broad participation to counter private monopolies.