It’s hard to picture a more nightmarish vision of our AI future than thisAI companies are hoovering up books, scanning them, then destroying themThe optimistic case for AI is clear: incredible scientific breakthroughs, life-enhancing productivity gains and universal access to knowledge. The other Lords of AI – Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic – have been open about their own worries. Between 500,000 and a million books were purchased and subjected to this treatment to feed the AI beast, and other AI firms are doing it, too. The entire concept sounds like it was spat out by an AI asked to imagine what a nightmarish AI future would look like. I’m afraid that I end the week leaning more to the negative side of the ledger, and feeling protective of my beloved books.