After rumors swirled that TikTok owner ByteDance had lost tens of millions after an intern sabotaged its AI models, ByteDance issued a statement this weekend hoping to silence all the social media chatter in China.
In a social media
post translated and reviewed by Ars, ByteDance clarified "facts" about "interns destroying large model training" and confirmed that one intern was fired in August.
According to ByteDance, the intern had held a position in the company's commercial technology team but was fired for committing "serious disciplinary violations." Most notably, the intern allegedly "maliciously interfered with the model training tasks" for a ByteDance research project, ByteDance said.
None of the intern's sabotage impacted ByteDance's commercial projects or online businesses, ByteDance said, and none of ByteDance's large models were affected.
Online rumors suggested that more than 8,000 graphical processing units were involved in the sabotage and that ByteDance lost "tens of millions of dollars" due to the intern's interference, but these claims were "seriously exaggerated," ByteDance said.
arstechnica.com
