this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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96
Unredacted files reveal Anthropic’s ‘secret plan’ to ‘destructively scan all the books in the world' (www.thebookseller.com)
submitted 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 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 4 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Words and ideas don't become sacred when they are committed to paper. Unless they destroyed the last copy of something that has not been digitized, this is totally fine.

[–] ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 0 points 44 minutes ago (1 children)

I didn't say words were sacred, but destroying millions of books is a colossal waste of resources. This is not totally fine.

[–] astro@leminal.space 1 points 31 minutes ago

The resources were wasted by the publishers when they transformed the resources into a finished product with very limited utility and reusability. Books on shelves are not resources.

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Sure, but it is rather a waste of paper, ink, manufacturing and transportation capacity etc. It's not the only instance of this of course, waste of unsold inventory exists in just about any industry that sells physical products, but it's still frustrating to see it.

[–] astro@leminal.space 1 points 38 minutes ago

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.