Google engineer accused of allegedly stealing AI commerce secrets and techniques for China

A federal grand jury has indicted a Google engineer, Linwei Ding, aka Leon Ding, on March 5 on fees of stealing commerce secrets and techniques surrounding Google's AI chip software program and {hardware}, earlier than he was arraigned Wednesday morning in California. Was arrested in Newark. Deputy Lawyer Normal Lisa Monaco stated in an announcement that Ding “stole greater than 500 confidential recordsdata containing AI commerce secrets and techniques from Google whereas secretly working for China-based firms making an attempt to realize an edge within the AI ​​expertise race.” ”

A lot of the stolen knowledge reportedly revolves round Google's Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips. Google's TPU chips energy lots of its AI workloads and, mixed with Nvidia GPUs, can prepare and run AI fashions like Gemini. The corporate has additionally provided entry to chips by accomplice platforms similar to Hugging Face.

Software program designs for each V4 and V6 TPU chips, {hardware} and software program specs for GPUs utilized in Google's knowledge facilities, and designs for Google's machine studying workloads in knowledge facilities are among the many recordsdata allegedly stolen .

The federal government has accused Ding of transferring these recordsdata to a private Google Cloud account between Could 2022 and Could 2023.

He reportedly did this by “copying knowledge from Google supply recordsdata into the Apple Notes utility on his Google-issued MacBook laptop computer” after which changing them from Apple Notes to PDF to keep away from detection by Google's “knowledge loss prevention system.” Transformed.

The federal government says that lower than a month after he began stealing the recordsdata, a Chinese language machine studying firm referred to as Rongshu provided him the job of CTO, and he traveled to China for 5 months to lift cash for the corporate , and later he based and led a machine studying. The startup, referred to as Zhisuan, remains to be working for Google. He resigned from Google in December 2023 — and reportedly booked a one-way ticket to Beijing, scheduled to depart two days earlier than his deadline — when the corporate started asking him about his uploads.

The DOJ additionally claims that in December 2023, he allegedly faked his attendance at a Google workplace within the US by having one other worker scan his badge on the door, whereas he was truly in China. Ding has been charged with 4 counts of theft of commerce secrets and techniques, so if convicted he may withstand ten years in jail and a $250,000 nice on every depend.