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Why assume it is? We don't know, and the fact that the process is so opaque and would have been totally undisclosed if not for journalists doesn't exactly make

Why assume it is? We don't know, and the fact that the process is so opaque and would have been totally undisclosed if not for journalists doesn't exactly make me confident they are "doing things by the book" on this one.

qarl2 26d ago
Because you usually find out if someone is doing something before you get mad about it. No?
- voidhorse 25d ago
  You should already be upset. A company with far greater resources than you has potentially prevented you from accessing a portion of the world's information. Because they haven't been transparent, you don't know. You should react to the facts, which are that a company has taken moves, largely surreptitiously to prevent you from accessing intimation. There is zero reason to assume good will in this scenario. You should demand more transparency and more insight into operations, period. Unless you have a vested interest in the company.
  - qarl2 25d ago
    You understand that what you just said is true of almost every company in the United States... right? Sorry, but I'm going to save my efforts for the people who are ACTUALLY doing bad things - not just the people who I don't like who MIGHT be doing bad things. Otherwise it kinda seems hysterical. IMHO.
    - voidhorse 25d ago
      > You understand that what you just said is true of almost every company in the United States... right? No. It definitely isn't. There are plenty of US companies, one of them large and recognizable, that actually make it their mission to give you access to information in some fashion. We have different definitions of "bad thing". In my opinion, unilaterally potentially erasing human history is already bad. Is it the worst thing someone could do? No, probably not, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be bothered by it. I'm not sure what kind of argument you're really trying to make here. I don't find LLMs that valuable, a few companies being the only providers of "frontier" models bothers me, and their possibly destroying works of historical interest also bothers me. Until they come out and find a way to make their scans available to the public, I'm not going to be happy about this. In my opinion, you shouldn't be happy about it either. These companies have everything to gain by making it harder for you to access knowledge (so that you are forced to pay them continuously for their "knowledge" in the form of information sparse LLM tokens). They have almost nothing to gain by enhancing your access to knowledge.
      - qarl2 25d ago
        > potentially My point is I don't understand how someone can get mad about something they're not even sure is happening. Are you aware that the publishing industry itself has destroyed more than 500X as many books as Anthropic ever will? Your concerns seem misguided. But I suspect we'll just have to agree to disagree on that one. You have a nice day.
        voidhorse 25d ago
        > Are you aware that the publishing industry itself has destroyed more than 500X as many books as Anthropic ever will? I'm not sure why everyone on hacker news so often falls for the "my friends are jumping off the bridge, so I can too" fallacy. Not to mention, there are clear differences between the processes under consideration, which might bother you, even if the outcome is the same. No, I don't care that publishers destroy books because usually they only do that when the book has proven to fail to sell (not the case here, clearly, since the books were sold!) and out of necessity because of resource constraints and not because they are using them to build a proprietary alternative product they plan on charging me for. I don't understand why people are engaging is such shoddy, shallow thinking here. I think the difference in our viewpoints ultimately lies in our faith in the companies involved. I have little to no faith that the digital scans of these texts will make it out to the public based on historical behavior of companies and the current legal complications around copyright. As such, I find it grossly unfair for several companies, which have significantly more economic and logistical resources than interested individual buyers, to systematically purchase rare works and thereby prevent individuals from accessing those works, possibly in perpetuity. The point is that even if they were to eventually release these, they are effectively, as of now, as of my lifetime, no longer available. Again, we have little information on the specifics, but it's the principle of the matter, the gross asymmetry here, that bothers me. It's all worsened by the fact that they are doing this so that they can use a commodity which you could have paid for once to train a new utility, tokens, that they want to charge you for on a metered basis. If I understand you, you seem to be more confident that they might eventually release the works, or you are less bothered by the power asymmetries here. I actually do hope you turn out to be correct, and they find a way to release the material, or at least tell us what they bought. However, I doubt this will happen. I hope you have a good day too! Thanks for sharing your perspective on the matter.

qarl2 26d ago

Because you usually find out if someone is doing something before you get mad about it. No?

voidhorse 25d ago
You should already be upset. A company with far greater resources than you has potentially prevented you from accessing a portion of the world's information. Because they haven't been transparent, you don't know. You should react to the facts, which are that a company has taken moves, largely surreptitiously to prevent you from accessing intimation. There is zero reason to assume good will in this scenario. You should demand more transparency and more insight into operations, period. Unless you have a vested interest in the company.
- qarl2 25d ago
  You understand that what you just said is true of almost every company in the United States... right? Sorry, but I'm going to save my efforts for the people who are ACTUALLY doing bad things - not just the people who I don't like who MIGHT be doing bad things. Otherwise it kinda seems hysterical. IMHO.
  - voidhorse 25d ago
    > You understand that what you just said is true of almost every company in the United States... right? No. It definitely isn't. There are plenty of US companies, one of them large and recognizable, that actually make it their mission to give you access to information in some fashion. We have different definitions of "bad thing". In my opinion, unilaterally potentially erasing human history is already bad. Is it the worst thing someone could do? No, probably not, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be bothered by it. I'm not sure what kind of argument you're really trying to make here. I don't find LLMs that valuable, a few companies being the only providers of "frontier" models bothers me, and their possibly destroying works of historical interest also bothers me. Until they come out and find a way to make their scans available to the public, I'm not going to be happy about this. In my opinion, you shouldn't be happy about it either. These companies have everything to gain by making it harder for you to access knowledge (so that you are forced to pay them continuously for their "knowledge" in the form of information sparse LLM tokens). They have almost nothing to gain by enhancing your access to knowledge.
    - qarl2 25d ago
      > potentially My point is I don't understand how someone can get mad about something they're not even sure is happening. Are you aware that the publishing industry itself has destroyed more than 500X as many books as Anthropic ever will? Your concerns seem misguided. But I suspect we'll just have to agree to disagree on that one. You have a nice day.
      - voidhorse 25d ago
        > Are you aware that the publishing industry itself has destroyed more than 500X as many books as Anthropic ever will? I'm not sure why everyone on hacker news so often falls for the "my friends are jumping off the bridge, so I can too" fallacy. Not to mention, there are clear differences between the processes under consideration, which might bother you, even if the outcome is the same. No, I don't care that publishers destroy books because usually they only do that when the book has proven to fail to sell (not the case here, clearly, since the books were sold!) and out of necessity because of resource constraints and not because they are using them to build a proprietary alternative product they plan on charging me for. I don't understand why people are engaging is such shoddy, shallow thinking here. I think the difference in our viewpoints ultimately lies in our faith in the companies involved. I have little to no faith that the digital scans of these texts will make it out to the public based on historical behavior of companies and the current legal complications around copyright. As such, I find it grossly unfair for several companies, which have significantly more economic and logistical resources than interested individual buyers, to systematically purchase rare works and thereby prevent individuals from accessing those works, possibly in perpetuity. The point is that even if they were to eventually release these, they are effectively, as of now, as of my lifetime, no longer available. Again, we have little information on the specifics, but it's the principle of the matter, the gross asymmetry here, that bothers me. It's all worsened by the fact that they are doing this so that they can use a commodity which you could have paid for once to train a new utility, tokens, that they want to charge you for on a metered basis. If I understand you, you seem to be more confident that they might eventually release the works, or you are less bothered by the power asymmetries here. I actually do hope you turn out to be correct, and they find a way to release the material, or at least tell us what they bought. However, I doubt this will happen. I hope you have a good day too! Thanks for sharing your perspective on the matter.