this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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Unredacted files reveal Anthropic’s ‘secret plan’ to ‘destructively scan all the books in the world' (www.thebookseller.com)
submitted 20 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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In the filings, Anthropic states, as reported by the Washington Post: “Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world. We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.”

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[–] astro@leminal.space 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

This seems more like an indictment of the practice of physical publishing than destructive book scanning, in which case I generally agree. There are a host of industries with baked-in inefficiencies that our life experiences have conditioned us to accept as normal or unavoidable when really have no business persisting in the modern world. Printed books is definitely one of them.

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 2 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I wouldn't say print books have no place today, it can't be assumed that one will have access to electronics in all circumstances after all and many people do prefer physical media, but it's definitely an indictment of the sort of cheaply made basically disposable books made in larger quantities than needed to fill their current niche, and of the way unwanted (by their owners) but usable goods are dealt with in general.

[–] smh@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 hour ago

Even teenagers sometimes prefer dead tree books to ebooks. Back when I worked in a public library, we could tell when a book was assigned reading because we'd suddenly get 10 requests for our 2 copies. The students had access to the ebook, they just preferred paper.

[–] astro@leminal.space 2 points 15 hours ago

Yeah, you're right to clarify that, saying printed word has absolutely no place is hyperbolic and wrong. In cases where it is necessary to maintain parity of information access, paper is fine.