ByteDance companybehind TikTok, has fired an intern after it was discovered that he was maliciously interfering with its artificial intelligence (AI).
Reports of an intern allegedly sabotaging ByteDance's AI model circulated on Chinese social media this weekend, but the tech giant said the claims were exaggerated and contained inaccuracies.
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The AI model, known as Doubao, is China’s answer to ChatGPT and is based on ByteDance’s AI architecture. Social media posts claimed that an intern had tampered with the model’s training process, injecting code into a powerful AI system with thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs).
It is rumored that the intern was driven by dissatisfaction with the lack of resources available to his department. The posts claimed that the intervention caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. However, ByteDance denied this claim, noting that the intervention did not affect its core commercial products, online operations, or major language models.
According to the South China Morning Post, which first published the story, the intern belonged to the technology commercialization team, responsible for advertising the company's technological development.
Read also: Meta: Lays off employees at WhatsApp and Instagram
ByteDance told the BBC that social media posts and some media reports contain inaccuracies, while the company also denies that it suffered losses of nearly $10 million due to the incident.
Source: cybernews
