Apple reveals 'shocking evidence' from ex-employee's MacBook in OpenAI suit • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple reveals 'shocking evidence' from ex-employee's MacBook in OpenAI suit

#21

Post by steveBK123 » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

biggc wrote: post #17

> Additionally, Apple learned about Liu’s use of the schematic because he used it on a Mac mini which later synced via iCloud to the MacBook he took from Apple. Apple now also wants access to that Mac mini. I'm very curious about the privacy implications of this. I know that anything I do and store on my company's laptop can be tracked, but I hadn't considered that if I forgot to sign out of my personal Gmail on it t…

> I forgot to sign out of my personal Gmail

Never, ever, ever sign into personal mail/messaging on work machines. Even the appearance of having done so just sets up for bad things.

This was kinda iffy 20 years ago, now its crazy to do. We all have phones now, there's no good reason to do this.

Re: Apple reveals 'shocking evidence' from ex-employee's MacBook in OpenAI suit

#22

Post by outside1234 » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

pluc wrote: post #16

> Apple alleges that Liu ran a simulation in March using the circuit schematic file in LTspice, an electrical engineering tool. In messages from around that time, Liu said his AI “agent” learned to run LTspice and review the results. "I didn't steal it, I fed it to an agent who then fed it back to me". > Apple argues that when trade secret information is fed into an AI agent or model that learns from it, that learnin…

Let's do intellectual property from books next!

Re: Apple reveals 'shocking evidence' from ex-employee's MacBook in OpenAI suit

#23

Post by steveBK123 » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:22 PM UTC

karim79 wrote: post #4

Happened at a (large) company I worked for in the past. A devops guy stole the DB ahead of going to work with a rival, he was caught and the rival of course wanted nothing to do with it. I'm not sure of his fate but it couldn't have been much fun.

A mature organization does not want the liability and if contacted by previous employer with evidence of these kinds of allegations, immediately gives said employees the boot.

Re: Apple reveals 'shocking evidence' from ex-employee's MacBook in OpenAI suit

#24

Post by morkalork » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:24 PM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #21

biggc wrote: post #17

> Additionally, Apple learned about Liu’s use of the schematic because he used it on a Mac mini which later synced via iCloud to the MacBook he took from Apple. Apple now also wants access to that Mac mini. I'm very curious about the privacy implications of this. I know that anything I do and store on my company's laptop can be tracked, but I hadn't considered that if I forgot to sign out of my personal Gmail on it t…

> I forgot to sign out of my personal Gmail Never, ever, ever sign into personal mail/messaging on work machines. Even the appearance of having done so just sets up for bad things. This was kinda iffy 20 years ago, now its crazy to do. We all have phones now, there's no good reason to do this.

Hell, some employers are even helpful enough to block gmail, yahoo etc domains on their network.

Re: Apple reveals 'shocking evidence' from ex-employee's MacBook in OpenAI suit

#25

Post by RodgerTheGreat » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:25 PM UTC

carabiner wrote: post #13

I wonder how many times this has happened without anyone being caught.

Or being caught, but without sufficiently rigorous evidence to take to court.

Re: Apple reveals 'shocking evidence' from ex-employee's MacBook in OpenAI suit

#26

Post by happytoexplain » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:25 PM UTC

> Apple argues that when trade secret information is fed into an AI agent or model that learns from it, that learning "may create irreversible and continually propagating uses of the trade secret."

Yes. Yes, please make this argument, Apple. Some fascinating other conclusions follow from this.

Re: Apple reveals 'shocking evidence' from ex-employee's MacBook in OpenAI suit

#27

Post by elonfboy » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:27 PM UTC

outside1234 wrote: post #22

pluc wrote: post #16

> Apple alleges that Liu ran a simulation in March using the circuit schematic file in LTspice, an electrical engineering tool. In messages from around that time, Liu said his AI “agent” learned to run LTspice and review the results. "I didn't steal it, I fed it to an agent who then fed it back to me". > Apple argues that when trade secret information is fed into an AI agent or model that learns from it, that learnin…

Let's do intellectual property from books next!

lol oh no the plagiarism machine got plagiarized!

Re: Apple reveals 'shocking evidence' from ex-employee's MacBook in OpenAI suit

#28

Post by dwrodri » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:30 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #20

joshka wrote: post #14

> Apple argues that when trade secret information is fed into an AI agent or model that learns from it, that learning “may create irreversible and continually propagating uses of the trade secret.” This is somewhat of a high impact argument to test. I wonder if the case will eventually get to working this point out.

There's already some precedent when dealing with humans reverse engineering systems. We use "cleanroom" approaches where the ones doing the reverse engineering are segregated from those doing the later design and development work. Instead of producing a design document based on the thing being studied, the reverse engineers produce a specification from which a new design, untainted by knowledge of the original design…

question to clarify:

If the LLM designs the circuit, it is clear "contamination" if the tool calls which wrote the RTL / Verilog are also in the same context window as the specification design.

If a windows DLL, distributed without a license that says anything regarding, is it a "clean room implementation" if there is some nonzero chance the source code was leaked into the weights at pre-train time? I guess there should be some sort of method for subpoenaing frontier labs to ask "can you grep for this code in the training set for this model", but that might not be practical or feasible.

Re: Apple reveals 'shocking evidence' from ex-employee's MacBook in OpenAI suit

#29

Post by everybodyknows » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:31 PM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #19

jmclnx wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really OpenAI but today's society. I say this started with the "just do it and ask for forgiveness later" attitude that started maybe 20 or 30 years ago. At one time most people had respect, even people at the top, now many people just do what they want. Plus most of the time they get away with it.

Well the asking for forgiveness part is also missing in this case, entirely.

It's actually forbidden, by advice of legal counsel, because in court the other side would present it as evidence of knowing culpability.

Re: Apple reveals 'shocking evidence' from ex-employee's MacBook in OpenAI suit

#30

Post by jayde2767 » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:32 PM UTC

elonfboy wrote: post #27

outside1234 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's do intellectual property from books next!

lol oh no the plagiarism machine got plagiarized!

Has anyone seen Pandora? I want to have a look inside that box she's been carrying around...it's time we start suing the pants off this "generative" stuff...