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

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

#191
post #142
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A coworker of mine once answered the wrong cell phone and said the wrong company name. (He was working for a competitor as well as our company.) Another turned his computer that “wouldn’t behave” into IT, full of porn.

> Another turned his computer that “wouldn’t behave” into IT, full of porn. Every tech support worker has seen this countless times. So many people are completely blind to the idea that turning your device over to support means support can actually see what’s on your device…

It’s wild. It’s one of those “Do we have to tell you people to not do this?!?!?”

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

#192
post #96

It is cute that anyone thinks intellectual property can be defended much longer. All intelligence will get folded into whichever models have the loosest restrictions on training on IP, and those models will become the smartest and most capable so everyone will use them. But also like, do not steal IP you could easily have re-created again. Those involved in this scheme were doubly idiots because they stole the IP in…

> It is cute that anyone thinks intellectual property can be defended

This is probably what Liu told himself before taking actions that will destroy his life.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You know, I've always had one question about "cleanroom" work. The person in the cleanroom knows what the output is supposed to be, so how clean is the cleanroom really? For instance, if I said I wanted to write a sorting algorithm, then I would know that my goal is to sort some data. I might come up with a novel way of doing that, or I might come up with one that has already been written. Either way, I have the goal…

> The person in the cleanroom knows what the output is supposed to be, so how clean is the cleanroom really?

Very, this is the entire point. If you only know an input/output mapping, then you don't know the internals of the original product. Your implementation is "clean" wrt that potentially proprietary knowledge. You use the two-room approach (one team in a dirty room seeing potentially proprietary information, one in the cleanroom with only the spec) to ensure that segregation of knowledge for your future legal defense. This lets you make the case, in court, that any duplication from the original to the "clone" (or whatever) product is just coincidental, or the consequence of standard design choices.

If you don't use this approach, you don't have that cover, and you have essentially no defense if copying is found.

Remember, the main point of this is the legal defense.

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I wonder how much rope Apple gave these people to hang themselves with.

This feels like too much credit to Apple?

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

#196
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.

Not sure why people are latching on to this. I'm 95% sure the AI agent was not "trained" on this intellectual property but rather the IP was just analyzed and it's usage and details were recorded to the AI agents memory (typically markdown/JSON summary of previous sessions). The defense IMO is just trying to muddy the waters between "irreversible AI training that updates weights" and "AI learning by just storing secr…

Not sure why the downvotes on this - it's a pretty reasonable take. I suspect that you're right that it's unlikely that the tainted items would be used to update the weights here and are more likely to be something that would be in sessions / memories rather than future model weights.

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

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good lord. Smart people doing the dumbest things with their work equipment. I have a former coworker who was the VP of Finance at my company. He suddenly got fired out of the blue. The company was in the midst of trying to find a buyer (this was announced) so this was extra surprising. Turns out, he knew a lot of bad news about the company, and they caught him looking for a job. They fired him because he was too much…

I am constantly dumb founded at the people who conduct deeply personal business on a company laptop. Some individuals do not even own their own computer. Has every job hunt they have pursued has been done on their previous employers equipment?

Last year, I was recruiting a data scientist for a side project. I was referred to two DSes, albeit from academia, to help.

Neither had their own personal laptop. One kept his laptop in the office all the time and just used an iPad at home. The other just plain didn't have a personal one. Work was the only one she had and she had to return it when she got laid off.

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

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the headline says "second". Anything greater than 0 is bad but seems a little short of a "plague".

The first link appears to say 22 cases. 12 have faced sanction.

1. 22 "investigated" as part of a wide scope review, ie, it could mean an entire department was investigated 2. review was for "staff internet usage" so those sanctions could be for anything from regular internet porn or gambling sites or whatever else violates their employment conditions 3. OP said the plague was among "top-level police officers"

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

#199
post #46

Citadel had an employee take code, and had to use divers to recover it from a canal: https://www.businessinsider.com/yihao-ben-pu-citadel-2011-11

the amount of ads on this page oh lord

uBlock Origin user here. What ads?

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

#200
post #96

It is cute that anyone thinks intellectual property can be defended much longer. All intelligence will get folded into whichever models have the loosest restrictions on training on IP, and those models will become the smartest and most capable so everyone will use them. But also like, do not steal IP you could easily have re-created again. Those involved in this scheme were doubly idiots because they stole the IP in…

> It is cute that anyone thinks intellectual property can be defended This is probably what Liu told himself before taking actions that will destroy his life.

I -exclusively- write and create FOSS without referencing anything proprietary. I do not want to use any tool anyone has any means to take away from me.

I do not believe proprietary software should exist. With AI trending the way it is, I may get my wish.

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