It gets even worse. The person not only kept the laptop and used an exploit to download confidential Apple documents, they bragged about it to a contact who was still working at Apple who was also feeding him information:

> Liu allegedly kept an Apple-issued laptop after departing the company and exploited a vulnerability to download dozens of confidential Apple documents while he was working at OpenAI. He also maintained a relationship with Yu-Ting "Alyssa" Peng, an Apple employee who continued to give him updates on Apple's projects, vendor decisions, and engineering details. When Liu learned he still had access to Apple's systems, he texted Peng "LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny."

This is how you behave when you think you're so much smarter than everyone around you that consequences don't apply to you.

Whenever I leave a company I make sure everything that belongs to the company goes back to them and I wipe any access credentials or authenticator codes that might be on any of my devices. I can't imagine being so brazen that you'd keep the company laptop and then start using an exploit to download confidential information for your new employer.

Doing it at a the company that most aggressively enforces secrecy is even crazier.

> OpenAI apparently used confidential Apple hardware information when approaching Apple suppliers, and tricked one company into using a "specific trade secret metal-finishing technique" for an OpenAI device by claiming it had Apple's permission to do so.

Reminds me of how Sam Altman told the board that a safety reviewer had approved one of their AI models when the reviewer had done no such things.

The crucial part of why non-competes are gross is that they're trying to enforce what you do after someone stopped receiving anything from the past employer. If someone is helping competitors when still working somewhere, or actively taking stuff from their past employer after they've left, then yeah, of course that's dumb and should be punished. But there's no reason a non-compete clause is needed for that!

Culture issue. From How to Apply to Y Combinator[1] by Paul Graham:

"Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage."

> we’re not looking for the sort of obedient, middle-of-the-road people that big companies tend to hire. We’re looking for people who like to beat the system.

1: https://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html

It seems to be a common trait of the AI people to just brazenly violate the law. It’s like a requirement for working at openAI is to think rules don’t apply to you because you’re so smart.

Remember it's apple lawyer words, not established facts.

> emailing themselves

These are supposedly our brightest minds..

Apple colluding on no poaching agreements was far worse and more damaging. So I don’t feel bad for them.

Sure, “Trade Secret” non-competes are usually a pretext employers use to keep low-wage workers under their thumbs, but protecting bonafide trade secrets is their only sorta legitimate use, IMO. The world would be better if they were illegal, but letting engineers disperse confidential information from their last employer wouldn’t be the beneficial part.

Yeah every job transition I’ve managed I was straightforward and some new employers instructed me to do so.

It’s weird too, these people’s history will show up on job sites and etc, people will find out… fast.

The examples seem clumsy and amateurish.

AirDrop you mean lol? Anyone can now have a local LLM make a QR code based data transfer script

This isn’t the first time something like this happens and I always wonder how are these seemingly smart people earning good money so dumb.

> Apple says it discovered a pattern of OpenAI recruits emailing themselves confidential information when leaving Apple, including Tan.

That's one of the dumbest things one can do while on their soon-to-be ex-employer's network.

make sense since they stole all of humanity knowledge for their gain

Generally speaking, companies retaining a competitive advantage with each other is good for their investors but bad for the public. It's usually to the public's benefit for employees to share knowledge, it makes goods and services cheaper and more available.

Every single time.

If someone calls himself open, you should know who it is and what to expect.

Apple will lose this because they didn't do the due diligence to do basic protection against this.

As a counterpoint, why should a “metal finishing technique” be proprietary? Lying to the vendor that Apple said it’s ok is obviously wrong, but an employee taking that knowledge in their head doesn’t seem wrong to me. We have moved past the age of indentured apprentices and the freemasons.

This may be just one bad employee, i.e., Mr. Tan. Your quoted sentences say OpenAI did such and such, but it may all be just Mr. Tan. That's not to say OpenAI is not responsible because they are supposed to give strong guidance to new hires that they are not to bring any confidential information from their former employer.