CNN
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A Google worker was charged Tuesday with stealing synthetic intelligence commerce secrets and techniques from the tech big whereas secretly working with two Chinese language-based firms within the AI trade.
Linwei Ding, who additionally goes by Leon Ding, is charged with 4 counts of theft of commerce secrets and techniques. If convicted, he faces as much as 10 years in jail for every rely.
“The Justice Division is not going to tolerate the theft of synthetic intelligence and different superior applied sciences that might put our nationwide safety in danger,” Legal professional Normal Merrick Garland mentioned in an announcement Wednesday, including that “we’ll fiercely defend delicate applied sciences developed in America from falling into the palms of those that shouldn’t have them.”
Ding, a 38-year-old Chinese language nationwide who lives in California, is accused of copying greater than 500 information with confidential info from Google into his personal private account over the course of 1 yr, starting in 2022. The information included know-how concerned within the constructing blocks of Google’s superior supercomputing knowledge facilities, prosecutors say.
An lawyer for Ding is just not but listed.
As a part of his duties at Google, prosecutors say, Ding helped to develop the software program deployed in Google’s supercomputing knowledge facilities. Due to that work, Ding had entry to Google’s “{hardware} infrastructure, the software program platform, and the AI fashions and functions they supported,” they are saying.
A couple of months after Ding allegedly started copying Google’s information, he was provided the chief know-how officer position for an “early-stage know-how firm” based mostly in China, the Justice Division says. Ding allegedly traveled to China for a number of months, the place he participated in investor conferences to lift cash for the corporate, and potential buyers to the corporate had been informed that Ding was an government and owned 20% of the corporate’s inventory.
Ding took steps to hide his work whereas in China, prosecutors say, together with by having one other worker use his badge to entry his workplace in order that it will appear like he was in the USA.
Inside the subsequent yr, Ding based his personal know-how firm within the “AI and machine studying trade,” prosecutors say. The corporate allegedly utilized to a Chinese language-based startup program and boasted that “we’ve got expertise with Google’s ten-thousand-card computational energy platform; we simply want to copy and improve it – after which additional develop a computational energy platform suited to China’s nationwide circumstances.”
In an announcement, Google mentioned it carried out an intensive investigation into Ding’s alleged misconduct and shortly referred the case to the FBI. Ding was a junior worker, Google spokesperson José Castañeda informed CNN, and the corporate screens file transfers to cloud storage platforms together with Google Drive and Dropbox.
“We now have strict safeguards to forestall the theft of our confidential business info and commerce secrets and techniques,” Castañeda mentioned. “After an investigation, we discovered that this worker stole quite a few paperwork, and we shortly referred the case to regulation enforcement. We’re grateful to the FBI for serving to defend our info and can proceed cooperating with them intently.”