Hacker Remix

ByteDance sacks intern for sabotaging AI project

210 points by beedeebeedee 2 days ago | 215 comments

dang 1 day ago

(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41906970, but we merged that thread hither)

nl 1 day ago

The story that was going around on social media (which I only know because Claude refused to translate it sometimes) was that a particular developer was modifying weights in other developers models and crashing their training runs so that the developers own work looked better in comparison.

https://twitter.com/YouJiacheng/status/1847420973580243092

gradientsrneat 14 hours ago

How is Claude refusing to translate it significant? Ex: did it help you find the post?

nl 3 hours ago

Jeremy Howard posted a link about it refusing to translate

cushpush 17 hours ago

"if i can't have agi no one can"

josephd79 16 hours ago

haha

00000z 20 hours ago

lmao wtf

vab2500 16 hours ago

haha

cushpush 17 hours ago

how is this any different from starting new projects at google and leaving them in a half-baked state because that leads to a promotion faster? incentives align behavior

nl 17 hours ago

If you really can't see how that is different I don't know what to say.

wyldberry 1 day ago

What we often think of as Insider Threat in the west is just another Tuesday in Chinese business. I have many experiences of this in the video game industry. This industry sabotage and theft is a very real part of getting ahead, even amongst companies that are owned by the same parent company (ex: studios owned in part by Tencent).

flohofwoe 22 hours ago

And it doesn't stop at sabotage or theft ;)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/xu-yao-death-sentence-poisoning...

thorncorona 8 hours ago

that link doesn't really do it justice. this was a vendetta

quinttttle 1 day ago

for every gifted, motivated, positive, constructive person in the world, there are probably 100,000 that want to tear them down and eat the carcass.

roywiggins 1 day ago

10,000 people is as many people as some entire towns, I don't think society would hold together very long if it were true.

100,000 supposes that there are... hmm... about eighty thousand non-evil people in the world, and (odds are) exactly none of them are Marshallese and about 2 are Samoan, to give a sense of how silly this is.

Clent 10 hours ago

I think you are assuming there are a unique 10,000 people for each gifted individual. I think it safe to say there is overlap and that those 10,000 people are each going after several gifted people.

You also appear to be assuming there are no mid range people who everyone ignores, that is going to be the majority of the population.

ozim 8 hours ago

But those people don’t have to be evil all the time.

Society holds well if someone steals a candy from the shop.

Those people can become shitty and despicable for that one person they envy and can be great for their friends and family all the other time.

Log_out_ 1 day ago

It doesn't . But usually that third of the population is busy going for each others throat and ignoring the "fools" while then taking the coins that mysteriously spawn near those as psychopath price mobey.

BobaFloutist 14 hours ago

Oh, so for every 2 good people there's actually 1 bad person. That's a very different ratio.

cjsawyer 1 day ago

I believe the opposite. The issue is that destroying requires much less effort than creating.

cutemonster 20 hours ago

You can have both at the same time: Say, 15 who want to help them, and 5 who would want to hurt them. And then you can be right both of you. Although the angry ones would be harder to see (sychopants)

ozim 8 hours ago

Even better imagine people don’t have to be mean/awful all the time. They can be shitty for a coworker and then be great for friends and family or be great for people at other job.

There are really evil people that might be shit all the time but society is rather good at spotting them.

smaudet 1 day ago

There is probably a high percentage of tearing down, I doubt its so extreme.

I think maybe 1 in 100k is actually anything special, but odds are you aren't special, you just noticed that 20% of the population is as gifted/motivated/constructive as you are (statistically speaking, assuming a bell curve).

And of those, yes, some small percentage will still feel "special" and affronted that other people have the same ideas/goals/desires as them.

It's a rat race and it's not your fault.

simplify 1 day ago

Only in low-trust societies. Modern, higher-trust society can only function because this isn't true.

ChrisMarshallNY 1 day ago

Early in my career, one of the senior engineers in my group had a T-shirt that read:

    Old Age and Treachery Beats Youth and Enthusiasm, Every Time.

Looks like this guy tried the “treachery” part, before he had the “old age” part down.

ugh123 1 day ago

Does the "old age" part give the ability to better cover tracks?

DrillShopper 15 hours ago

No but it typically gives seniority in the organization which means more credibility which can foreclose anyone looking too carefully.

dspillett 19 hours ago

It can give you the experience to know how careful you need to be in doing that, if only because you've lived long enough to see many be scuppered because of their failure to do so well enough.

dumpsterdiver 5 hours ago

Experience certainly does, and with enough experience comes old age.

Dalewyn 1 day ago

For better or worse, when you have more time to learn how the real world works and make the right connections with the right people, you get much more leeway in what you can get away with.

Naturally, older people had more time to do that than younger people. This is why most young people get their shins blasted while older people just get a slap on the wrist, if they're found out.