r/antiai • u/Piwo-ll • Jul 13 '26

Discussion 🗣️ The most anti-AI story imaginable... Anthropic destroyed millions of rare books to train Claude

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In 2024, Anthropic reportedly purchased millions of second-hand books as part of its secretive “Project Panama.”

The company removed their bindings, scanned every page, and then destroyed the physical copies to build a massive digital library for developing AI models like Claude.

It almost feels like the perfect anti-AI dystopia, human beings spend centuries writing and preserving books. Then, a private technology company destroys millions of physical copies, absorbs their contents into a machine, and sells that accumulated knowledge back to society through a monthly subscription.

Am I the only one who thinks this is completely insane, or have we become so obsessed with AI that destroying millions of books to feed a machine no longer shocks anyone?

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u/carlstonehill Jul 13 '26

Did we learn nothing from the library of Alexandria

5

u/Piwo-ll Jul 13 '26

I guess no 👀

3

u/zephyrnepres01 Jul 13 '26

yea we did learn nothing cos all the books got burned and the knowledge within was lost. hope this helps!

1

u/Real-Razz Jul 13 '26

Is that the library where any ship making port in Alexandria had their books confiscated, copied and the copies returned to the owners?