A Chinese national who recently quit his job as a software engineer for Google in California was accused of trying to transfer artificial intelligence technology to a Beijing-based company that secretly paid him, according to a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday.
Prosecutors accused Linwei Ding, who was part of the team that designs and maintains Google’s massive AI supercomputer data system, of stealing information about the system’s “architecture and functionality” and stealing software used to “orchestrate “supercomputers” when cutting. cutting edge of machine learning and AI technology.”
Between May 2022 and May 2023, Mr Ding, also known as Leon, uploaded 500 files, many containing trade secrets, from his Google-issued laptop to the cloud using a multi- steps that allowed him to “evade immediate detection,” to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Northern District of California.
Mr. Ding was arrested Wednesday morning at his home in Newark, California, not far from Google’s sprawling Mountain View campus, officials said.
Beginning in June 2022, Mr. Ding was paid $14,800 a month — plus a bonus and company stock — by a China-based technology company without telling his superiors 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 AI startup he had founded at an investor conference in Beijing in November, saying “we have experience with Google’s 10,000-card computing power platform. we just have to reproduce it and upgrade it,” prosecutors said in the indictment, which was unsealed in federal court in San Francisco.
“The Department of Justice will not tolerate the theft of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies that could endanger our national security,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who announced the indictment during an appearance at a conference American Bar Association in San Francisco. on Wednesday afternoon.
The charges highlight the high-stakes competition for AI leadership. While American companies have developed most of the advances in genetic artificial intelligence, China has made it a strategic priority to lead the growing field.
Tech industry insiders have estimated that China is at least a year behind the United States, but many Chinese startups have tapped American technology to try to keep up, especially Meta’s open-source model of a large language, called Llama. Generative AI, which is behind ChatGPT and the wave of chatbot conversationalists, has quickly become one of the most coveted technologies in the world.
In seconds, these types of tools can generate persuasive text and images that could be used to boost productivity, create disinformation, or provide entertainment. Audio and video capabilities are not far behind. Google developed some of the fundamental breakthroughs that make these systems work. The company said its latest group of AI models, called Gemini, are among the most powerful available today.
But since ChatGPT’s debut, Google has lost its status as a market leader, and its stumbles have drawn attention. The company has been widely criticized for racially biasing its image creation, thereby disrupting users’ ability to create images of people.
Allegations of intellectual property theft have been a major sticking point in US-China relations for years. A Chinese national was arrested in 2015 for selling part of IBM’s source code to parties in China. In 2018, a former Apple employee was arrested while trying to board a flight to Beijing with the company’s self-driving trade secrets.
In the same year, Chinese company Sinovel Wind Group was convicted of stealing wind turbine technology from a Massachusetts-based company, AMSC, which suffered more than $800 million in losses.
In October, Christopher A. Wray, director of the FBI, said China’s intellectual property theft was a threat to US economic and national security, describing it as the “defining threat of this generation.”
José Castañeda, a Google spokesman, said in a statement: “We have strict safeguards in place to prevent the theft of our confidential commercial information and trade secrets. Upon investigation, we found that this employee had stolen several documents and quickly referred the case to law enforcement. We are grateful to the FBI for helping protect our information and will continue to work closely with them.”
The indictment suggested that Mr. Ding had some help, saying that another Google employee passed Mr. Ding’s identity to a company office to help him hide a trip to China.
Google, referring to Mr. Ding as a “junior employee,” initially said he acted alone, but later said that did not appear to be the case. It claimed that its security systems worked as they should.
It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Ding has legal representation.
The government has provided few details about the life of Mr Ding, who started working for Google in early 2019 and quit suddenly in January — after booking a one-way ticket to Beijing.
Mr. Ding listed a degree from the Dalian Institute of Technology in China in 2010, along with degrees from the University of Southern California and Stanford, on a LinkedIn page that matched his name and employment details at Google.
The page lists positions at software semiconductor and healthcare companies over the past decade, along with awards he said he won at Google, including the “Perfy Award and Feats of Engineering.”
Kitty Bennett contributed to the report.
