Last week we published a story that revealed an Amazon warehouse where the company scans and destroys thousands of books for AI training data.
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company → publish → data
The following is an interview with one of the Amazon employees at this warehouse.
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following → follow → warehouse
We granted this employee anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
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they → grant → press
The employee worked at Amazon’s VGT3 warehouse, which is housed in the same facility as LAS8, where Amazon operates its print-on-demand business.
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Amazon → work → business
We discovered that VGT3 was used to destructively scan books for AI training data by placing a tracking device in a shipment of rare books that a bookseller suspected was being acquired by an anonymous AI company.
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bookseller → discover → company
We saw the shipment travel across the country before finally landing at VGT3.
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shipment → see → VGT3
Online, Amazon employees who worked at VGT3 described the work of receiving shipments of books, cutting the spines off of them, and scanning the loose pages.
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who → work → pages
The Amazon employee I talked to described what that operation looks like from the warehouse floor.
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operation → talk → floor
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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interview → edit → clarity
What do you do when you get to work at VGT3?
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you → do → VGT3
We have to walk past everything to get to the back of the warehouse.
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We → have → warehouse
That's where I first saw all the scanners, and I was really wondering what was going on.
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what → see → scanners
I remember I even asked someone what they were doing and they said they’re not sure even the people who work there know what they’re doing.
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they → remember → what
Of course, once I got over there and started putting two and two together, I kind of understood.
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I → get → two
And you know, I think people who work there probably know what was going on over there, but probably just didn't want to talk about it.
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what → know → it
We also saw them cutting the spines off the books and everything.
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them → see → books
And after they scan it, they throw all the loose leaf papers into a big shuttle.
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they → scan → shuttle
[Editor’s note: Shuttles is how Amazon refers to gaylords, which are big open cardboard boxes that are often used to store books in bulk.
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that → refer → bulk
] So they're all mixed together.
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they → mix → ?
Where I worked, primarily they would bring us boxes of books, or sometimes there's shuttles of books.
What kind of books?
All kinds of books.
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they → work → books
When we first started a lot of them were brand new.
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lot → start → them
Some of them are used as well.
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Some → use → them
Like you could tell, they were liquidated from a library or something like that.
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they → tell → that
We were even getting boxes of stuff from London.
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We → get → London
There was even like, I don't know what you would call them, but it was like kind of stapled together papers that said that they were presented to Parliament on the behalf of Her Royal Majesty the Queen.
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they → be → Majesty
I don't know if they're public.
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they → know → ?
Probably they're public, but it was just interesting that we found all that in there.
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we → find → that
What did you think the books were for?
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books → think → think
That's what we were wondering, and we were kind of like, ‘this is a lot of random information.’
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this → wonder → information
They have literally any kind of book you could think of.
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you → have → book
They have ones in different languages.
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They → have → languages
We saw a lot of German and Russian books, and we actually got whole pallets of Japanese books.
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we → see → books
Some of these books are brand new and they're like still sealed.
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they → seal → books
A lot of the Japanese ones were, but yeah, we do get the stuff from the libraries, and that's the stuff I think is more mixed because they're not all nice in boxes and everything like that.
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they → get → that
They're kind of just thrown into the shuttle.
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They → throw → shuttle
What was it like working there?
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it → work → What
Our job was to unbox the books, and honestly, they seem like a mess over there.
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they → unbox → mess
Like they're not really well managed or organized at all.
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they → manage → ?
Their process changed every day.
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process → change → ?
But we were pretty much putting them in a tote [a small plastic stackable bin] so that they can go be scanned in and sorted, so that they can go over to the people to cut the bindings off.
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they → put → bindings
…and 29 more, not listed.
The Aporia
