纽约时报中文网 - 英文原版-英Ex-Google Engineer Charged With Stealing AI Secrets for Chinese Firm
March 7, 2024 2 min 298 words
这则报道揭示了一位前谷歌工程师被指控窃取人工智能机密为中国公司服务的事件，凸显了科技行业的竞争与合规之间的敏感平衡。这不仅令人震惊，更引发对科技创新和知识产权的深刻反思。面对全球科技领域的激烈竞争，保护创新成果的合法权益至关重要。此事也突显了国际企业面临的风险，即员工可能成为信息泄露的风险点。随着技术全球化的加剧，如何平衡开放合作与保护核心技术的边界将成为全球企业和国家政策制定者面临的共同挑战。
A Chinese citizen who recently quit his job as a software engineer for Google in California has been charged with trying to transfer artificial intelligence technology to a Beijing-based company that paid him secretly, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Wednesday.
Prosecutors accused Linwei Ding, who was part of the team that designs and maintains Google’s vast A.I. supercomputer data system, of stealing information about the “architecture and functionality” of the system, and of pilfering software used to “orchestrate” supercomputers “at the cutting edge of machine learning and A.I. technology.”
From May 2022 to May 2023, Mr. Ding, also known as Leon, uploaded 500 files, many containing trade secrets, from his Google-issued laptop to the cloud by using a multistep scheme that allowed him to “evade immediate detection,” according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of California.
Mr. Ding was arrested on Wednesday morning at his home in Newark, Calif., not far from Google’s sprawling main campus in Mountain View, officials said.
Starting in June 2022, Mr. Ding was paid $14,800 per month — plus a bonus and company stock — by a China-based technology company, without telling his supervisors at Google, according to the indictment. He is also accused of working with another company in China.
Mr. Ding openly sought funding for a new A.I. start-up company he had incorporated at an investor conference in Beijing in November, boasting that “we have experience with Google’s 10,000-card computational power platform; we just need to replicate and upgrade it,” prosecutors said in the indictment, which was unsealed in San Francisco federal court.