Comment by ursuscamp
7 days ago
Rare as in your grandfather's John Deere manual from 1982, not rare as in a test print run of The Great Gatsby. The number of books ingested by these AI companies is a drop in the bucket compared to old books destroyed every year through normal means.
> The number of books ingested by these AI companies is a drop in the bucket compared to old books destroyed every year through normal means.
Citations? Also what exactly are these 'normal means'? As a bibliophile who loves scouring used book stores for out-of-print titles this is a topic I'm very interested in.
Here's EPA data from as recent as 2018: https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...
EPA estimates that hundreds of thousands of tons of books are landfilled or recycled every year. That's just the United States. It seems likely that the worldwide figure is in the millions of tons.
> Also what exactly are these 'normal means'?
Normal means is throwing it in the recycle bin. Especially for stuff like a 1982 John Deere manual. I've never donated an old appliance's manual to the library. Have you?
Amongst my friends, I'm one of the rare folks who donates books to the library. Most people just trash them. And I know the library only wants them to try to sell them in their book sales (or online) so they can get money. Almost nothing one donates to a library actually ends up on the library shelves.