Spy games are afoot at the world’s top AI labs.
Driving the news: OpenAI engineer and Saudi national Abdulrahman Alfozan was arrested by the FBI for allegedly spying on his (now former) employer. The arrest happened after OpenAI found a listening device hidden behind a TV in a boardroom reserved for execs. The company pointed a camera at the spot and caught Alfozan snooping around.
Another recording device was found in a bag belonging to Alfozan, which ended up in the lost and found. Prosecutors also allege that Alfozan had also used an internal search tool to get info on OpenAI boardrooms as a means to find a place to bug.
Why it matters: The AI industry is quickly becoming a breeding ground for corporate espionage cases, with widespread concerns about top companies’ reliance on pools of foreign workers — particularly those from China.
It’s unclear whether or not Alfozan was spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia, but there is precedent for it. In 2022, a Twitter employee was found guilty of passing private information on to the kingdom.
Zoom out: In other AI spying news, court proceedings for Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI began yesterday. Apple alleges that former employees now working at OpenAI took trade secrets with them on the way out the door and shared them with OpenAI. Interestingly, in a new filing as part of the case, OpenAI claims one of its ex-employees who left for Apple did the same thing, sharing more than 100 files about an unreleased product with Apple.—QH
