AI's Data Grab: The War on Open Access

A war is raging on the internet. Billions-dollar AI companies are aggressively scraping data from libraries, archives, non-profits, and academic publishers, fueling the training of Large Language Models (LLMs). These institutions, dedicated to making quality information universally accessible, are fighting back, but the AI companies' insatiable hunger for data is overwhelming. Ignoring robots.txt and nofollow directives, these bots overload servers, crippling websites. This wastes developer time and resources, and threatens the preservation of cultural and scientific information. The ultimate outcome may be a world where quality information is locked behind paywalls, accessible only to a privileged few.