When Barnes & Noble Isn’t Enough: Meta Eyes Iconic Publisher

What goes through Mark Zuckerberg’s mind? Aside from posting videos of himself chucking spears, it seems he’s fancied himself a bookworm—or at least seen the potential of being one. According to the New York Times, some Meta executives reportedly discussed a potential acquisition of publishing giant Simon & Schuster. The reason? Not for their love of literature (unless it’s the binary language and algorithmic poetry), but to feed their hungry, data-munching artificial intelligence models.

Story Highlights (or “Plots We Wish Were Fiction”):

• In an audio shared with the New York Times, Meta bigwigs were caught discussing the possibility of acquiring Simon & Schuster. Why? To satisfy the insatiable hunger of Meta’s AI models, of course.
• Don’t mistake this for a book club on steroids; between March and April in 2023, the tech team at Meta purportedly had regular meetings about gathering more data—not paperback thrillers—for their AI’s cognitive diet.
• The discussions also touched on offering a baller bid of $10 per book (Imagine telling J.K. Rowling that her Harry Potter Series would earn her $70…), but only for the licensing rights, we presume, in a bid to further pad their AI’s literary palate.

Final Thoughts

Are Zuckerberg and his band of techie knights looking to transplant the literary world into their digital realm? It seems less like a love story for books and more like an AI’s unending gluttony for data. While most of us read a good novel for its rich plot and intriguing characters, Meta potentially wants to buy an entire publishing house to polish its AI’s linguistic capabilities. Shakespeare, meet algorithms. Or in the words of a possibly AI-enhanced Hamlet: “To read or not to read, that is the computation.”