Comment by olalonde

11 hours ago

> That's why Anthropic switched to scanning paper books.

Could they not just subscribe to the academic publishers like universities do? Or buy eBooks? I don't understand how the "scanning" part is relevant here other than used physical books being cheaper perhaps?

Bulk second-hand books are a lot cheaper than ebooks. Also not all books are available as ebooks, and ebooks have terms of service that presumably prevent them being used for training.