RE "...Instead, they enforce the copyright and force AI companies to shred books they want to ingest...."
Why are AI companies forced to shred books?
RE "...Instead, they enforce the copyright and force AI companies to shred books they want to ingest...."
Why are AI companies forced to shred books?
They want to have a digital copy and the judge ruled they can only keep one copy.
You do not need to shred books to scan them. This only happens if you don't care about preserving the integrity of the books and you want to scan more cheaply.
But their legal framework for being permitted to scan the books en masse (they are "transforming" the book from physical to digital) requires destruction of the original. Otherwise it wouldn't be transforming, it would be duplicating.