Second-generation bookseller investigates: bulk book purchases by AI companies might be algorithmic arbitrage, not training data

A second-generation bookseller provides a detailed analysis of recent rumors about AI companies bulk-purchasing rare books. He finds that the orders are mostly for obscure but non-precious books, shipped to Amazon FBA prep services, suggesting algorithmic arbitrage rather than training data. He warns about the quieter crisis of disappearing bibliographic metadata and describes his project to build better records.

• Anthropic
• AI training
• books
• metadata
• bibliographic data