The Company That Wanted to Feed Your Books to AI
In early 2024, someone started buying books. Not rare first editions or the latest bestsellers, but ordinary used books, ordered in batches of tens of thousands from secondhand sellers such as Better World Books and World of Books.
What happened next was stranger. The books were taken to scanning facilities, where hydraulic cutters sliced off their spines. The loose pages were fed through high-speed scanners, and the paper was sent off for recycling. Nothing was kept except the words, now stored as digital files.
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