A Chinese national who recently quit his job as a software engineer at Google in California tried to transfer artificial intelligence technology to a Beijing-based company for which he secretly paid him, according to a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday. was charged with a crime.
Prosecutors accused Linwei Ding, who was part of the team that designed and maintained Google's vast AI supercomputer data system, of stealing information about the system's “architecture and functionality” and using it to “tune” the supercomputer. accused of stealing software. The cutting edge of machine learning and AI technology. ”
Mr. Ding, also known as Leung, used a multi-step scheme that allowed him to “evade immediate detection” between May 2022 and May 2023, using a multi-step scheme to “evade immediate detection” from Google-issued laptops to the cloud, including many containing trade secrets. He said he uploaded 500 files. to the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California.
Ding was arrested Wednesday morning at his home in Newark, California, not far from Google's sprawling main campus in Mountain View, officials said.
The indictment alleges that starting in June 2022, Ding received $14,800 per month (plus bonuses and company stock) from the China-based technology company without telling his Google bosses. He is also suspected of collaborating with another Chinese company.
At an investor conference in Beijing in November, Ding publicly called for funding for the new AI startup he founded, saying, “We have access to Google's 10,000-card computing power platform.'' “We have experience. We have experience using Google's 10,000-card computing power platform.” We just need to duplicate it and upgrade it,” prosecutors said in an indictment unsealed in San Francisco federal court.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who announced the indictment while attending an American Bar Association conference in San Francisco, said, “The Department of Justice will continue to use artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies that could endanger national security.'' We will not tolerate theft.” Wednesday afternoon.
The charges highlight the high-stakes race for dominance in artificial intelligence. While American companies have made the most advanced developments in the field of generative AI, China has made leading the growth field a strategic priority.
Technology industry officials estimate that China is at least a year behind the U.S., but many Chinese startups are leveraging U.S. technology to catch up, especially the opening of Meta, called Llama. Source large-scale language models tend to do so. ChatGPT and the generative AI behind the wave of conversational chatbots have quickly become one of the most coveted technologies in the world.
These types of tools can generate persuasive text and images in seconds that can be used to increase productivity, create misinformation, or provide entertainment. Audio and video features aren't far behind either. Google has developed some of the fundamental breakthroughs that make these systems work. The company says its latest set of AI models, dubbed “Gemini,” are among the most powerful currently available.
But since ChatGPT's debut, Google has lost its position as market leader, and its stumbles have garnered attention. The company has been widely criticized for racial bias in its image generator, and has suspended the ability for users to create images of people.
Accusations of intellectual property theft have been a major stalemate in U.S.-China relations for years. In 2015, a Chinese national was arrested for selling some of IBM's source code to parties in China. In 2018, a former Apple employee was arrested trying to board a plane to Beijing with the company's self-driving car trade secrets.
That same year, Chinese company Sinobel Wind Group was convicted of stealing wind turbine technology from Massachusetts-based company AMSC, resulting in AMSC losses of more than $800 million.
In October, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said intellectual property theft from China is a danger to the U.S. economy and national security, describing it as “the defining threat of this generation.”
Google spokesperson Jose Castañeda said in a statement: Upon investigation, we determined that this employee had stolen numerous documents, and we immediately reported the incident to law enforcement. He is grateful to the FBI for helping protect our information and we will continue to work closely with him. ”
Google added that its security systems worked as intended and that the “junior employee” was acting alone.
But the indictment suggests there was some cooperation from Mr. Ding, with another Google employee showing Mr. Ding's ID at the company's office to help hide his trip to China. I'm assuming you swiped it.
It was not immediately clear whether Ding had legal representation.
The government has released few details about the life of Ding, who started working at Google in early 2019 and abruptly quit in January after booking a one-way ticket to Beijing.
Ding listed his degree from China's Dalian University of Technology in 2010, along with degrees from the University of Southern California and Stanford University, on his LinkedIn page, which corresponds to his name and employment details at Google.
The page lists his work in software semiconductor and healthcare companies over the past 10 years, as well as awards he has earned at Google, including the Perfy Award and Feats of Engineering.
kitty bennett Contributed to the report.