Hidden Airtag reveals Amazon is trashing rare books to train AI
Hidden Airtag reveals Amazon is trashing rare books to train AI
隐藏的 Airtag 揭示：亚马逊正在销毁珍稀书籍以训练 AI
For the past year or so, booksellers have suspected that AI firms are buying up huge lots of rare books, then destroying them after scanning them to train AI. But this was hard to prove until now, as 404 Media reports that an Airtag hidden in a rare book shows that at least one tech giant, in the race to advance its frontier models, is behind some of the bulk orders: Amazon. 在过去一年左右的时间里，书商们一直怀疑人工智能公司正在大量收购珍稀书籍，并在扫描用于训练 AI 后将其销毁。但这一点直到现在才得到证实：据 404 Media 报道，藏在一本珍稀书籍中的 Airtag 显示，至少有一家科技巨头为了在尖端模型竞赛中领先，正在进行此类批量采购，这家公司正是亚马逊。
On Monday, 404 Media revealed that it had connected with a bookseller who agreed to plant an Airtag in a rare book that was part of a bulk order. That Airtag was then tracked to an Amazon AI training facility in Las Vegas that housed a team focused on tearing books from their spines and scanning pages, 404 Media reported. Apparently tone-deaf to the escalating backlash over destructive book scanning, a logo on the door of that team’s warehouse, VGT3, showed a Tyrannosaurus rex preparing to devour a book, 404 Media documented. 周一，404 Media 披露，他们联系到了一位书商，该书商同意在一本属于批量订单的珍稀书籍中植入 Airtag。据 404 Media 报道，该 Airtag 的轨迹最终指向了亚马逊位于拉斯维加斯的一个 AI 训练设施，那里有一个专门负责拆除书脊并扫描页面的团队。404 Media 记录到，该团队所在的 VGT3 仓库门上印着一个霸王龙准备吞食书籍的标志，这显然对外界因破坏性书籍扫描而日益高涨的抵制声浪充耳不闻。
Amazon declined to comment on 404 Media’s findings, only providing Ars with the same statement it gave to 404 Media, which does not mention AI training specifically. “Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use,” Amazon’s statement said. However, Amazon is developing what it considers frontier AI models, which require a massive amount of unique training data to stay competitive with leading firms like Google, OpenAI, or Anthropic. 亚马逊拒绝就 404 Media 的调查结果发表评论，仅向 Ars 提供了与给 404 Media 相同的声明，其中并未明确提及 AI 训练。“亚马逊通过商业渠道购买书籍，以帮助开发和改进客户使用的产品和服务，”亚马逊的声明称。然而，亚马逊正在开发其所谓的尖端 AI 模型，这些模型需要海量的独特训练数据，才能在与谷歌、OpenAI 或 Anthropic 等领先公司的竞争中保持优势。
Right now, firms carefully guard their training data to avoid losing an edge. And training models on text from rare books that are difficult to find would seemingly offer an advantage for Amazon, especially since rivals like Anthropic and xAI have publicly stated that they are not training on rare or antique books. Further, it seems that Amazon needed a new source of original text. 404 Media flagged discussions in online forums where VGT3 workers suggested that earlier this year Amazon had run low on books to scan. The shortage was so alarming that they worried the warehouse might shut down if Amazon couldn’t find more books to scan. At one point, the supply completely ran out, workers said. 目前，各公司都在小心翼翼地保护其训练数据，以免失去竞争优势。利用难以寻觅的珍稀书籍文本来训练模型，似乎能为亚马逊提供优势，尤其是考虑到 Anthropic 和 xAI 等竞争对手已公开声明他们不会使用珍稀或古籍进行训练。此外，亚马逊似乎急需新的原始文本来源。404 Media 指出，在线论坛上的讨论显示，VGT3 的员工曾表示今年早些时候亚马逊的扫描书籍库存告急。这种短缺令人担忧，员工们甚至担心如果亚马逊找不到更多的书，仓库可能会关闭。员工们表示，一度曾出现过完全断货的情况。
But the facility is still operational, 404 Media reported. And it’s now confirmed that bulk orders of rare books delivered there are systematically destroyed by this crew. Many book lovers are horrified by destructive book-scanning (since there is an alternative), with one staunch critic, Michael Burry, even reportedly labeling the practice to be “evil incarnate.” However, Amazon workers reported in forums that they consider the gig to be a “nice” opportunity for those drawn to a humdrum job with flexible hours. 但据 404 Media 报道，该设施目前仍在运营。现在可以确认，运往那里的珍稀书籍批量订单正被该团队系统性地销毁。许多书籍爱好者对这种破坏性的扫描方式感到震惊（因为明明有替代方案），一位坚定的批评者迈克尔·伯里（Michael Burry）甚至据称将这种做法称为“邪恶的化身”。然而，亚马逊员工在论坛上表示，对于那些喜欢单调工作且时间灵活的人来说，这份工作是一个“不错”的机会。
On top of revealing that rare works that booksellers value are getting chewed up and swallowed by Amazon’s AI machine, 404 Media suggested that its investigation helped firm up another bookseller theory about why AI firms might be ordering certain rare books and not others. After a reportedly historic year of sales, booksellers had suspected that AI firms were targeting books with ISBN numbers in order to ensure that the highest volume of unique works were present in training data sets. And 404 Media’s review of Amazon workers’ online discussions indicated that they were trained to scan barcodes or ISBNs before scanning books. That practice, 404 Media reported, “gives further credence” to booksellers’ theory that “AI companies are trying to methodically scan every printed book in the world by working through the list of ISBNs.” 除了揭露书商珍视的珍稀作品正被亚马逊的 AI 机器“咀嚼和吞噬”外，404 Media 还指出，其调查进一步证实了书商们的另一个理论：即 AI 公司为何会选择性地订购某些珍稀书籍。在经历了据称是销售额创纪录的一年后，书商们怀疑 AI 公司正瞄准带有 ISBN 编号的书籍，以确保训练数据集中包含最大量的独特作品。404 Media 对亚马逊员工在线讨论的审查显示，他们在扫描书籍前会被培训扫描条形码或 ISBN。404 Media 报道称，这种做法“进一步证实”了书商们的理论，即“AI 公司正试图通过 ISBN 列表，有条不紊地扫描世界上每一本印刷书籍。”
For booksellers, the money may be good, but the risk that their carefully sourced collections will be destined for destructive book scanning like Amazon’s raises an ethical dilemma. They know how to assess a wide range of rare books to determine their value, and AI firms seem to be skipping that step in hunting low-cost, unique ISBNs to complete their checklists. Right now, the books that AI firms are apparently buying up aren’t necessarily the kind of prized first editions of celebrated works that are typically valued quite highly. Instead, AI firms often target older books with lower monetary value, such as books that were never translated from a foreign language that’s not widely used today or books that were never popular enough to be widely distributed. 对于书商来说，钱可能赚得不错，但他们精心搜集的藏品最终可能面临亚马逊式的破坏性扫描，这引发了伦理困境。他们懂得如何评估各种珍稀书籍的价值，而 AI 公司在寻找低成本、独特的 ISBN 以完成其清单时，似乎跳过了这一步。目前，AI 公司显然正在收购的书籍并不一定是那些价值极高的著名作品的珍贵初版。相反，AI 公司往往瞄准货币价值较低的旧书，例如从未从当今不常用的外语翻译过来的书籍，或者从未流行到足以广泛发行的书籍。
However, these works may still have “historical value, intellectual value, sentimental value” that AI firms overlooked, the bookseller who planted the Airtag told 404 Media. A rare book’s value can be derived from “all sorts of things” that “the AI companies don’t care about. They just want the content as a bunch of words strung together.” 然而，那位植入 Airtag 的书商告诉 404 Media，这些作品可能仍然具有 AI 公司所忽视的“历史价值、学术价值和情感价值”。一本珍稀书籍的价值可能源于“各种各样的事情”，而“AI 公司并不关心这些。他们只是想要内容，把它们当作一堆串在一起的文字而已。”
On Reddit, some book fans debated whether it was that problematic that companies are destroying rare books to train AI, especially since, as the BBC reported, some of these books have been sitting on booksellers’ shelves for decades gathering dust. “You were not going to buy that old paper book,” one Redditor commented in response to a post lamenting that “an obscure book from 1700 is now a museum piece and may reveal day-to-day stuff that we didn’t know.” In that thread, the original poster said that the real problem was that tiny details and even major historical insights that can be gleaned from reviewing rare books will be lost to AI greed. AI firms will “never share the contents” of books they scan, the poster said, “as they don’t want anyone else to be able to train their AI” on the same works. 在 Reddit 上，一些书迷讨论了公司为了训练 AI 而销毁珍稀书籍是否真的那么成问题，尤其是正如 BBC 所报道的那样，其中一些书已经在书商的书架上积灰了几十年。“你本来也不会去买那本旧纸质书，”一位 Reddit 用户在回应一篇感叹“一本 1700 年的冷门书现在成了博物馆藏品，可能揭示了我们所不知道的日常琐事”的帖子时评论道。在该帖中，原作者表示真正的问题在于，通过查阅珍稀书籍可以获得的微小细节甚至重大历史见解，将因 AI 的贪婪而丧失。发帖者称，AI 公司“永远不会分享”他们扫描的书籍内容，“因为他们不希望其他人能够利用”同样的作品来训练他们的 AI。
“This sounds like propaganda from the AI haters,” another Redditor pushed back, but a subsequent commenter shared similar fears. Although people might clash with someone who argues that training AI on these works will make all the knowledge that a work contains more accessible online, the commenter suggested instead that AI models would only make available “warped, censored, and paywall.” “这听起来像是 AI 仇恨者的宣传，”另一位 Reddit 用户反驳道，但随后的一位评论者表达了类似的担忧。尽管人们可能会与那些认为“用这些作品训练 AI 将使作品中包含的所有知识在网上更易获取”的人发生冲突，但该评论者认为，AI 模型只会提供“扭曲的、经过审查的和付费墙后的内容”。