[Anthropic's 'Book-Destroying AI' Scandal Sparks Controversy Again: Musk Promises to Preserve Original Books, Sacks Slams Double Standards] According to monitoring by 动察 Beating, 404 Media recently discovered that ISBNdb has been bulk purchasing used books for AI companies, with single transactions reaching up to a million copies, while using non-disclosure agreements to hide the buyers' identities. Although the report did not name Anthropic, its previous 'buy books, dismantle books, scan, recycle' Panama project was quickly brought back into the spotlight for criticism. Anthropic had purchased millions of physical books, removed their spines for high-speed scanning, and then sent the original books for recycling. Internal documents revealed that the company did not want the public to know about this plan. What upset people the most was the possibility that rare and out-of-print books could also be fed into this process. While common books can be reprinted, once extremely rare editions are destroyed, they can never be replaced. Previously, courts ruled that scanning legally purchased books and destroying the originals could be considered fair use, but legality does not equate to a lack of opposition. Musk subsequently stated that he has instructed SpaceXAI to preserve rare books and adopt non-destructive scanning methods. Meanwhile, White House AI and crypto advisor David Sacks criticized Anthropic for its double standards: advocating for free use of global works to train its models while labeling competitors' paid use of Claude outputs for training as intellectual property theft. [Original Link]