Google was scanning millions of books before the LLM craze, and they didn't burn them. They partnered with libraries and built their own non-destructive scanning hardware. I'm guessing this comment is really about Anthropic, but they are distinct companies.
EDIT: I commented before reading the FT article. The comment by jackb4040 makes more sense to me now: some AlphaFold team members are moving to Anthropic, the company that has been in the news for shredding scanned books.
I actually didn't mean it literally, more just the general sense that any job you're doing that isn't sufficiently evil will eventually be rolled up. But that's interesting that there is now a literal connection between these two stories!
Comments
Google was scanning millions of books before the LLM craze, and they didn't burn them. They partnered with libraries and built their own non-destructive scanning hardware. I'm guessing this comment is really about Anthropic, but they are distinct companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books#Scanning_of_books
EDIT: I commented before reading the FT article. The comment by jackb4040 makes more sense to me now: some AlphaFold team members are moving to Anthropic, the company that has been in the news for shredding scanned books.
I actually didn't mean it literally, more just the general sense that any job you're doing that isn't sufficiently evil will eventually be rolled up. But that's interesting that there is now a literal connection between these two stories!