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A federal grand jury has indicted a Google engineer, Linwei Ding, aka Leon Ding, for allegedly stealing commerce secrets and techniques round Google’s AI chip software program and {hardware} on March fifth, earlier than he was arrested Wednesday morning in Newark, California. Deputy Lawyer Common Lisa Monaco mentioned in an announcement that Ding “stole from Google over 500 confidential information containing AI commerce secrets and techniques whereas covertly working for China-based corporations in search of an edge within the AI expertise race.”
A lot of the stolen information allegedly revolves round Google’s tensor processing unit (TPU) chips. Google’s TPU chips power many of its AI workloads and, along side Nvidia GPUs, can practice and run AI fashions like Gemini. The corporate has additionally provided entry to the chips via companion platforms like Hugging Face.
Picture: Justice Division
Software program designs for each the v4 and v6 TPU chips, {hardware} and software program specs for GPUs utilized in Google’s information heart, and designs for Google’s machine studying workloads in information facilities are among the many allegedly stolen information.
The federal government accuses Ding of transferring these information to a private Google Cloud account between Could 2022 and Could 2023.
He allegedly did so “by copying information from the Google supply information into the Apple Notes utility on his Google-issued MacBook laptop computer,” after which changing them from Apple Notes to PDFs to keep away from detection by Google’s “information loss prevention programs.”
The federal government says that lower than a month after he started stealing information, a Chinese language machine studying firm named Rongshu provided to make him CTO, he flew to China for 5 months to lift funds for the corporate, and he subsequently based and led a machine studying startup named Zhisuan, all whereas nonetheless working for Google. He resigned from Google in December 2023 — and reportedly booked a one-way ticket to Beijing scheduled to depart two days previous his finish date — after the corporate started asking him about his uploads.
The DOJ additionally claims that in December 2023, he allegedly faked being current at Google’s workplace within the US by having one other worker scan his badge on the door whereas he was really in China. Ding has been charged with 4 counts of theft of commerce secrets and techniques, so he’s going through as much as ten years in jail and a $250,000 tremendous on every depend if convicted.
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