Related: <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/bytedance-intern-fired-for-planting-malicious-code-in-ai-models/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/bytedance-intern...</a><p>(via <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41906970">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41906970</a>, but we merged that thread hither)
The story that was going around on social media (which I only know because Claude refused to translate it sometimes) was that a particular developer was modifying weights in other developers models and crashing their training runs so that the developers own work looked better in comparison.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/YouJiacheng/status/1847420973580243092" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/YouJiacheng/status/1847420973580243092</a>
What we often think of as Insider Threat in the west is just another Tuesday in Chinese business. I have many experiences of this in the video game industry. This industry sabotage and theft is a very real part of getting ahead, even amongst companies that are owned by the same parent company (ex: studios owned in part by Tencent).
I'm reminded of a time that an intern took down us-east1 on AWS, by modifying a configuration file they shouldn't have had access to. Amazon (somehow) did the correct thing and didn't fire them -- instead, they used the experience to fix the security hole. It was a file they shouldn't have <i>had</i> access to in the first place.<p>If the intern "had no experience with the AI lab", is it the right thing to do to fire them, instead of admitting that there is a security/access fault internally? Can other employees (intentionally, or unintentionally) cause that same amount of "damage"?
Early in my career, one of the senior engineers in my group had a T-shirt that read:<p><pre><code> Old Age and Treachery Beats Youth and Enthusiasm, Every Time.
</code></pre>
Looks like this guy tried the “treachery” part, before he had the “old age” part down.
The context is here: <a href="https://github.com/JusticeFighterDance/JusticeFighter110">https://github.com/JusticeFighterDance/JusticeFighter110</a>
OTOH: ByteDance intern responsible for spamming your web server with crawlers that ignore robots.txt given permanent position with a raise, now in management.
I have read the original article as well as many pieces of additional context posted in this thread and yet still don't understand what is going on here.<p>Yes, the intern was actively behaving maliciously, but <i>why</i>? What did he stand to gain from breaking another team's training code? I don't buy that he went through all that effort and espionage simply to make his own work look better. An intern is only employed for 3 months, surely sabotaging another team's multi-year project is not the most efficient way to make your toy 3-month project look better in comparison.
> Its commercial online operations, including its large language AI models, were unaffected by the intern's actions, the company added.<p>so did something actually happen or did they just post some inaccuracies on social media
"maliciously interfering" does a lot of the lifting here. And if true, I hope that they didn't stop at firing him. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I hate the kind of entitlement that makes people feel justified to destroy huge amounts of value.
> the intern allegedly "maliciously interfered with the model training tasks" for a ByteDance research project<p>Did the intern post a manifesto or something? What was the point of doing this?
I find it weird that China has a very tight information control <i>and</i> simultaneously over and over again has the weirdest "netizen" rumors that go mainstream.<p>What's the explanation? That they are explicitly allowed for some strategical reason? Something else?<p>Edit: @dang: Sorry in advance. I do feel like we got some pretty good discussion around this explosive topic, at least in its first hour.<p>Folks, keep up the good behavior — it makes me look good.
Call me paranoid..."paranoid." but this could be a good way for ByteDance to redirect blame to others when they do something in the future that people don't like. "It was a rouge employee and we fired them"