Anthropic didn’t want us to know that they were destroying millions of books to feed their software - Lithub

Project Panama capitalized on that loophole. Anthropic spent a bundle at libraries, online secondhand stores, and used bookstores like The Strand to build out a massive library—the Post’s article includes images of huge warehouses filled with books. Anthropic then hired “an experienced document scanning services vendor to convert from 500,000 to two million books over a six-month period,” according to the proposal sent out to vendors.

1. Who names these things? Project Panama?
2. This just seems so bad. It makes it visceral in a way scraping off the web isn’t. They literally rip apart the books after they’re done scanning. I’m sure they are not alone in this.