Oh, I'm certain that authors want to take away every right the reader has. This is easy to see empirically: we used to have the first-sale doctrine with physical books, but every digital platform has made reselling either impossible, or a violation of their terms. And yet, courts have rendered judgements that say training an AI model on a book is fair use if the book was obtained legally, meaning no additional license is needed. You assume the authors' permission is needed, but I'm not sure that assumption holds. I think your argument is mostly emotional, rather than legal.
Your use of the word "stealing" is incorrect, but regardless, I'm not condoning piracy, merely examining the incentives we've set up to lead massive, multi-billion dollar corporations from engaging in it.
