ByteDance denies major losses after AI intern disruption
The Chinese technology giant ByteDance, owner of the popular platform TikTok, announced the dismissal of an intern for "maliciously disrupting" the training process of an artificial intelligence (AI) model. However, the company firmly denied reports of alleged significant losses due to this incident, describing some reports as "exaggerated and inaccurate".
The entire incident relates to Doubao, the most popular generative chatbot based on artificial intelligence in China, which is similar to ChatGPT. The intern who caused the disruption was part of the team working with commercialisation technologies. However, as the company pointed out, the intern did not have experience with or direct contact with the team involved in developing artificial intelligence (AI Lab).
The individual was an intern with the [advertising] technology team and has no experience with the AI Lab. Their social media profile and some media reports contain inaccuracies, stated ByteDance in its statement.
The company also explained that the intern's actions did not compromise operations related to large language models, which are essential to their online commercial activities.
Moreover, ByteDance refuted information that the incident caused damages exceeding 10 million dollars, supposedly due to the disruption of the AI training system, which uses thousands of advanced graphics processors (GPUs).
The company emphasised that it decided to dismiss the intern immediately after detecting the incident in August. Additionally, it informed the intern's university and relevant industry bodies about the situation. Nonetheless, ByteDance did not provide details about the nature of the disruptions or the extent of any actual damage.
ByteDance's investments in AI development
It's worth noting that ByteDance has invested intensively in developing AI technology for some time. Artificial intelligence is a key component of many of their projects, including chatbots like Doubao and content generation tools like Jimeng, which facilitates video creation based on text.
Although the incident did not affect ByteDance's key operations, it underscores the challenges related to the security and protection of development processes in artificial intelligence, especially in companies operating on such a vast scale as ByteDance.
