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  • Hacker News
  • > 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.

    The warez want to to be free

    by fnord77
  • 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 brazen ways that were easily traced back to them. Do people really not understand that every corporate laptop and server these days tracks -everything- you do? That corpo paycheck comes at a price of no privacy of any kind.

    California has protections on you owning whatever you can take in your brain and these days that is all anyone needs with LLMs being as powerful as they are.

    by lrvick
  • > 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.

    by JumpCrisscross
  • I know it's unethical, but when I read this, I can't help but hope a pseudo-cleanroom/ai-laundered Linux GPU driver appears for MacBooks. What I wouldn't give to run Linux on my Apple hardware.
    by apatheticonion
  • that's not unethical at all.
    by brazukadev
  • Alternatively sponsor Linux friendly OEMs.
    by pjmlp
  • How about Asahi? Or is your hardware too new for it to apply.
    by tomkarho
  • 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

    by lokar
  • the amount of ads on this page oh lord
    by Marciplan
  • I don't understand why this keeps happening
    by MadrasThorn
  • One of the things I always told kids who came into these big trading firms is the owner(s) is/are a billionaire, and likely came up from one of the trading floors or something adjacent. They are not the “forgiving” types when it comes to shit like this, and they have infinitely more resources than you.

    So maybe don’t try to steal code, or trade concepts.

    Hasn’t stopped some people I know from trying…

    (For clarification I am not ex-CitSec and do not know this poor SOB, but he serves as the perfect poster child for “Don’t do that”)

    by HolyLampshade
  • > 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.”

    But they've accepted the business model of taking works without permission for training AI; they need that to be fair use.

    by kazinator
  • Mr. Liu boasted that for his work at OpenAI, he was "[f]eeling AI all day long," and that "[i]n the past hour," his AI "agent learned how to run LTspice and look at result, tune compensation parameter." (Id. ¶¶ 20-22.) He further explained that he ran these simulations, including with AI agents, for power conversion development work: "I try to make a behavior buck. With voltage outer and current inner. Everything ideal. It still took me a day.. now it's two hour. Including learning fresh." (Id. Ex. A (recipient of these messages responding, "Oh man! Why do they even need you then?" i.e., at OpenAI).)
    by irthomasthomas
  • 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.
    by karim79
  • 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.
    by steveBK123
  • Happens occasionally at big corporations, even the bloodsucking vampire. Best to distance yourself from such employees - lest they will do to you what they have done to others.

    The difference is, relative to OpenAi they have standards and morals.

    by blitzar
  • > the rival of course wanted nothing to do with it

    The key difference here seems to be that OpenAI very much wants something to do with it.

    by gyomu
  • > 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 learning “may create irreversible and continually propagating uses of the trade secret.

    Ok I'm hooked

    by pluc
  • Leopard ate my face.
    by qingcharles
  • Let's do intellectual property from books next!
    by outside1234
  • I'm not arguing for either side, but here's a fun thought experiment I've been thinking about a lot lately. If I learned things at one company, took my experience and memory to another company, and applied what I had learned there, am I technically stealing that company's secrets? What if I trained a team of agents to think and code like me at work, then exported those agentic skills and took them with me to another company? At what point would they still be considered the old company's property? Let's say I didn't take any code or proprietary information from the old company, just the coding style and best practices my agents learned from the old company's live metrics. Is that considered stealing from the company? Is that any different from me learning those patterns and skills personally and then reapplying them elsewhere?
    by newtonapple
  • Reminds me of the story of an ex-Coca-Cola employee who offered to sell the secret recipe to Pepsi. Pepsi immediately let Coca-Cola know and it was handled. Not a good look for OpenAI. They come off as desperate and unprofessional.
    by xvxvx
  • 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.

    by jmclnx
  • That's because pepsi already had coca-cola's secret recipe. I'm sure if they didn't have it already they would have been more than happy to at least have some knowledge before reporting it, but not like they didn't have the talent, money or technology to reverse engineer it at least a decade ago at that point.
    by himata4113
  • Based on all evidence so far Sam Altman has negative scruples so I'm pretty sure this would be incentivised if anything.
    by vasco
  • https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jul/07/marketingandpr... - I had only vague memories of this, but here's an article from the time about it.
    by Jtsummers
  • Funny to imagine that food scientists at these companies must have cracked these recipes decades ago, and the secrecy might now only serve as a loyalty test for the uninitiated in the food and beverage guild.
    by asdff
  • > 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 that they could legally search that information.

    The files syncing to the company laptop's disk is a layer of nuance that makes this situation tricky to evaluate.

    by biggc
  • I think I've heard about this before, apparently Apple encourages its employees to use the same iCloud account for personal and business use.
    by lozenge
  • at a previous job something we impressed on to people was you should not use work laptops for personal business, not because we want to go trawling through your personal stuff, but because if your work laptop becomes discovery material for legal proceedings, do you really want that lawyers you don't know digging through your personal email?

    (relatedly, we told people not to sign into work stuff on personal computers because then they might have to turn over those computers for discovery)

    by dkuntz2