Alexandria AI

Motivation

Throughout history, libraries have played a pivotal role in providing public access to knowledge and great works:

"The Great Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world. The library was part of a larger research institution called the Mouseion, which was dedicated to the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts. It is unknown precisely how many scrolls were housed at any given time, but estimates range from 40,000 to 400,000 at its height. Alexandria came to be regarded as the capital of knowledge and learning, in part because of the Great Library."

— Wikipedia

Now much of the world's knowledge is online. However, many of the great books humanity has produced over time are still not easily accessible due to language or other constraints. With the rise of censorship and the rewriting of books posthumously by authors' estates, knowledge may still get lost.

Generative AI provides a massive unlock of knowledge for humanity. We are hoping to use it to create a new, enduring digital Library of Alexandria accessible to everyone.

What we are doing

  1. Translating the top 1,000 off-copyright books into 100+ languages (as they become available). We realize these may be imperfect translations, but this will be the first time many of these books are available in these languages.
  2. Generating an audiobook version of each book across all major spoken languages. With TTS models, we can make the knowledge in these books even more accessible than before.
  3. Host language models over all the book versions so you can chat / talk / interact with each great work. Our stretch goal is to support chat sessions with multiple books — so you can e.g. simulate a group chat with Plato and Nietzsche.

We will host the books in all their translations for free download by any person around the world.

How can you help?

  1. Join the team. We are offering paid internships to people who will contribute to the engineering and book sourcing work. Apply here.
  2. Suggest a book by linking to a valid PDF via this form. You can also see the current list of books here.
  3. Donate to pay for translations and hosting. Link coming soon.

Sponsors

Initiator and founding sponsor: Elad Gil. Other sponsors and support list coming soon.