An informative data-driven perspective which explores why the alarming-sounding headlines about Anthropic’s destructive book scanning efforts may be misleading (and even manipulative). To be clear, I’m not saying that all critiques of tech companies are invalid. It’s just that the evidence for the validity of this specific moral panic is thinner than it might appear.

I’m a proponent of looking deeply into the underlying context and data of complex issues like this one. Many news outlets do report in a negativity-biased fashion since they can stir up outrage and get more attention. So, I feel it is important to be media literate and pay attention to the nuances of issues.

I should also note that this is just a Substack post and thus does not constitute a verified primary source like a scientific paper. From what I can tell, it makes legitimate arguments and presents legitimate data, but this is not a 100% certain conclusion.

On the curious debate over AI companies buying, digitizing, and discarding “rare” books.