Apple says ex-employee's MacBook shows he used stolen trade secrets at OpenAI
Apple reveals 'shocking evidence' from ex-employee's MacBook in OpenAI suit
In a supplemental brief filed in its lawsuit against former employee Chang Liu and OpenAI, Apple reveals forensic evidence from Liu's MacBook indicating he used Apple's trade secret power-converter circuit while working at OpenAI. The brief argues that feeding such secrets into AI agents creates irreversible harm and that Liu and his wife discussed restoring and using Apple-owned devices after learning of the investigation, risking evidence destruction. Apple urges the court to grant expedited discovery.
Where trade secret information is fed into an AI agent or model that 'learn[s]' from it, such 'learning' may create irreversible and continually propagating uses of the trade secret—harm that, at a minimum, is uniquely challenging to undo and requires prompt investigation.
- dgellow
The claims:
- Mr. Liu not only downloaded a confidential Apple circuit schematic but also used it in his work at OpenAI;
- Far from his unauthorized access to Apple’s third-party cloud storage being unknown to him, Mr. Liu and others at OpenAI were well-aware of that access;
- Mr. Liu, upon learning of Apple’s internal investigation of him, sent instructions for destroying evidence to an OpenAI colleague who confirmed she would comply; and
- Mr. Liu used a tool in his work at OpenAI that has the same name as an internal Apple engineering application used for Apple development work.
- joshka
> Apple argues that when trade secret information is fed into an AI agent or model that learns from it, that learning “may create irreversible and continually propagating uses of the trade secret.”
This is somewhat of a high impact argument to test. I wonder if the case will eventually get to working this point out.
- biggc
> Additionally, Apple learned about Liu’s use of the schematic because he used it on a Mac mini which later synced via iCloud to the MacBook he took from Apple. Apple now also wants access to that Mac mini.
I'm very curious about the privacy implications of this. I know that anything I do and store on my company's laptop can be tracked, but I hadn't considered that if I forgot to sign out of my personal Gmail on it that they could legally search that information.
The files syncing to the company laptop's disk is a layer of nuance that makes this situation tricky to evaluate.
- pluc
> Apple alleges that Liu ran a simulation in March using the circuit schematic file in LTspice, an electrical engineering tool. In messages from around that time, Liu said his AI “agent” learned to run LTspice and review the results.
"I didn't steal it, I fed it to an agent who then fed it back to me".
> Apple argues that when trade secret information is fed into an AI agent or model that learns from it, that learning “may create irreversible and continually propagating uses of the trade secret.
Ok I'm hooked
- xvxvx
Reminds me of the story of an ex-Coca-Cola employee who offered to sell the secret recipe to Pepsi. Pepsi immediately let Coca-Cola know and it was handled. Not a good look for OpenAI. They come off as desperate and unprofessional.
- karim79
Happened at a (large) company I worked for in the past. A devops guy stole the DB ahead of going to work with a rival, he was caught and the rival of course wanted nothing to do with it. I'm not sure of his fate but it couldn't have been much fun.
- kazinator
> Apple argues that when trade secret information is fed into an AI agent or model that learns from it, that learning “may create irreversible and continually propagating uses of the trade secret.”
But they've accepted the business model of taking works without permission for training AI; they need that to be fair use.
- apatheticonion
I know it's unethical, but when I read this, I can't help but hope a pseudo-cleanroom/ai-laundered Linux GPU driver appears for MacBooks. What I wouldn't give to run Linux on my Apple hardware.