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Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters

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Re: Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters

#171

Post by LatencyKills »

marklar423 wrote: post #132
LatencyKills wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something similar happened to me when I left Microsoft for Apple (I moved from the Visual Studio team to the Xcode team). MS spent six months trying to prove I'd taken "industry secrets" with me. I hadn't. The entire thing felt like a personal attack and was extremely stressful. It sounds like, in this case, Apple has hard proof that documents were stolen.

Did Apple help defend you against those claims during the six months?

They did. That said, I don’t know how much “defending” they had to do given that I was never even told what, exactly, I was supposed to have stolen. But, like I said, it was both surprising and anxiety inducing.

Re: Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters

#172

Post by joelthelion »

ricardobayes wrote: post #162
Zigurd wrote: post #100

Everybody wants a platform but nobody wants to spend what it takes to make a platform. That includes things like Windows Phone, Fire Phone, all the glasses, Humane, etc. As much as everybody hates on OpenAI for chaotic management, they did buy Jony Ive and are presumably giving him everything he wants to build a platform for them. Even though it probably only buys them a 20% chance of success, they haven't doomed the…

AI model providers have zero "moat", clients change them as they see fit. This week ChatGPT, next week Claude. The real value is and going to be in hardware - as long as China doesn't enter the GPU/RAM race. I increasingly see AI investment, generally speaking, as a lost cause. It has very little chance to pay off.

> The real value is and going to be in hardware

Unless someone comes up with a brilliant optimization strategy or new hardware that renders all that inefficient Nvidia crap overnight.

Re: Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters

#173

Post by xp84 »

seviu wrote: post #44
reenorap wrote: post #10

Apple must have hard evidence on this. I can’t believe they would take it this far without already knowing they are going to win. If they have to fire a huge chunk of their hardware employees it’s going to throw their IPO plans into chaos.

This is John Ternus having a beef with Tang Tan. It’s widely known they both competed for the role of CEO. Tim Cook would never have started this. It shows a level of pettiness and arrogance which I never expected to see from Apple. I can’t put myself in the mind of John, but he clearly hated Tang. From outside and with a parent’s perspective this looks like my kids throwing a tantrum. John must be thinking he is the…

Weird take. With as much evidence as they have (unless they're just wildly fabricating everything in their lawsuit complaint, which... really? All Apple's lawyers are just making up claims in court documents? Sounds very career-ending, why would the lawyers do that?) they would be complete idiots not to sue.

Re: Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters

#174

Post by compiler-guy »

bayindirh wrote: post #134
LatencyKills wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something similar happened to me when I left Microsoft for Apple (I moved from the Visual Studio team to the Xcode team). MS spent six months trying to prove I'd taken "industry secrets" with me. I hadn't. The entire thing felt like a personal attack and was extremely stressful. It sounds like, in this case, Apple has hard proof that documents were stolen.

> It sounds like, in this case, Apple has hard proof that documents were stolen. I believe some articles mentioned about employees bragging to their former colleagues about accessing documents. Also I believe they lied to Apple about being employed elsewhere so they can continue using their access and hardware, etc. If these are correct, the whole OpenAI playbook is very dirty, and I won't pity them a bit.

Apple also has server logs that track these former employees downloading confidential docs. It doesn't prove that they shared them over to OpenAI, but Apple has pretty solid proof that the former employees saved them without authorization.

Re: Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters

#175

Post by xp84 »

smith7018 wrote: post #37
nojito wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both parties will just settle. Apple already caught former employees accessing the Apple internal network with unreturned laptops after termination that’s pretty much game over.

Why would Apple settle? They probably want the same outcomes of the Waymo v Uber trial that forced Uber out of the market. Apple's accusations imply that every part of OpenAI's hardware effort has been tainted with Apple's trade secrets and is therefore illegitimate. They also have more money than God so they can keep the suit going as long as they want.

This is an interesting point here. Due to having infinite money already, that's a possible dynamic we might see. OAI admits "Yup, obviously you got us. Let's write a check." And Apple might just respond "Nah, we are obviously going to win at trial, the legal fees don't bother us a bit, and honestly we don't really need the money, we'd rather destroy you as heavily as possible, for some combination of making an example out of all the criminals involved, plus there's a tiny chance you could threaten us someday considering you hired 'our boy' Jony Ive to build hardware."

Re: Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters

#176

Post by compiler-guy »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #89
doctaj wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, these are letters to individuals about the existing lawsuit with OpenAI, not new lawsuits against individuals.

> these are letters to individuals about the existing lawsuit with OpenAI, not new lawsuits against individuals My guess is these employees weren’t chosen randomly. If they refuse to coöperate with Apple, they’ll get personally sued as well. And the reality of the matter is, given Altman’s public persona and reputation, there is a good chance an AG somewhere starts looking at whether these folks broke any laws.

Definitely not randomly chosen--Apple would have chosen people it believes may have evidence that relates to the case. It's a legal request to preserve that data.

But it doesn't follow at all that Apple is threatening to sue them. A long time ago, in an unrelated case, I got a letter like this because I was in the room when a certain decision was made and happened to have some notes about that meeting. But there was no chance I would be sued. I wasn't the decider, and was basically a third-party involved.

Re: Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters

#177

Post by isodev »

Zigurd wrote: post #100

Everybody wants a platform but nobody wants to spend what it takes to make a platform. That includes things like Windows Phone, Fire Phone, all the glasses, Humane, etc. As much as everybody hates on OpenAI for chaotic management, they did buy Jony Ive and are presumably giving him everything he wants to build a platform for them. Even though it probably only buys them a 20% chance of success, they haven't doomed the…

Why are we taking Apple’s side here? They made accusations, nothing had been proven yet.

Who is to say Apple employees (at Apple) haven’t been vibe coding or asking gpt for technical topics? Also, funny timing from Apple - there is a lot of PR and optics riding on this lawsuit.

Re: Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters

#178

Post by compiler-guy »

axus wrote: post #97
seviu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is John Ternus having a beef with Tang Tan. It’s widely known they both competed for the role of CEO. Tim Cook would never have started this. It shows a level of pettiness and arrogance which I never expected to see from Apple. I can’t put myself in the mind of John, but he clearly hated Tang. From outside and with a parent’s perspective this looks like my kids throwing a tantrum. John must be thinking he is the…

The alleged crime sounded childish. Appeal to rule of law, enforced by the court system is necessary for a fair business enviornment. Sending the notification letters is probably petty though.

These letters are simple "If you have evidence related to this lawsuit, you must preserve it" letters. And entirely routine in this kind of action. There are more of them than in most cases, because this is such a big case. But the gist is entirely routine.

Re: Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters

#179

Post by nxobject »

ricardobayes wrote: post #162
Zigurd wrote: post #100

Everybody wants a platform but nobody wants to spend what it takes to make a platform. That includes things like Windows Phone, Fire Phone, all the glasses, Humane, etc. As much as everybody hates on OpenAI for chaotic management, they did buy Jony Ive and are presumably giving him everything he wants to build a platform for them. Even though it probably only buys them a 20% chance of success, they haven't doomed the…

AI model providers have zero "moat", clients change them as they see fit. This week ChatGPT, next week Claude. The real value is and going to be in hardware - as long as China doesn't enter the GPU/RAM race. I increasingly see AI investment, generally speaking, as a lost cause. It has very little chance to pay off.

> AI model providers have zero "moat", clients change them as they see fit.

That might be true in tech-savvy industries -- but in non-tech industries where the biggest software purchase might be the office suite or the ERP, inertia means the GSuite shops stick with Gemini, and the Exchange/Office 365 shops stick with Copilot.

Re: Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters

#180

Post by compiler-guy »

smith7018 wrote: post #37
nojito wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both parties will just settle. Apple already caught former employees accessing the Apple internal network with unreturned laptops after termination that’s pretty much game over.

Why would Apple settle? They probably want the same outcomes of the Waymo v Uber trial that forced Uber out of the market. Apple's accusations imply that every part of OpenAI's hardware effort has been tainted with Apple's trade secrets and is therefore illegitimate. They also have more money than God so they can keep the suit going as long as they want.

They will just settle if a settlement gets them what they want for less than fighting this to legal completion would cost them (on a risk-adjusted basis).
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