Thread

1. patall · 1790265425 · focus · HN ↗

   Can someone explain why the old books could really be relevant. I get the pre-nuclear steel analogy, but why is this relevant given how much more modern texts exist. A few years ago, millions of yahoo groups were erased but now a few thousand books are what is needed to run a successful AI company? I mean, it can barely be about the information in those books (that would be very often outdated), but just for a little more text (with ever less marginal gain), what is the benefit?

   1. Legend2440 · 1790266460 · focus · HN ↗

      It sounds like it is about the information in the books. The titles they're looking for are all nonfiction. Not everything is on the internet, and just because it's a few years old doesn't mean it's outdated.

      Speaking from experience, the information density of published books is a lot higher than most internet text. It's very high quality training data.

      The goal here is to have all human knowledge in a single file, which is pretty neat IMO.

      1. newsy-combi · 1790267138 · focus · HN ↗

         The internet basically never delivered on the promise of replacing textbooks or even education as a whole. Wikipedia sucks on many topics, has insane internal politics, and is a tertiary source by design (redigesting blogs and books), whereas textbooks are generally secondary.

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