In the last few hours, the renowned media The Verge has published news that represents a true technological earthquake for Google, and that is that one of the company’s main engineers has been accused of leak trade secrets related to the TPU chips and the Google data centers for processing your AI.
Google is one of the companies that is evolving and investing the most in the development of artificial intelligence, with notable and visible results in many areas. When it seemed that the North American company was going to have the upper hand in this new era, it seems that everything can turn against it.
Commercial data in sensitive Google sectors
Linwei Ding has been accused by a federal jury of stealing trade secrets around the software and hardware of Google chips with components designed for the development of AI.
In the official statement, the California Deputy Attorney General said in a statement that Ding stole more than 500 confidential files containing AI trade secrets from Google while covertly working for China-based companies seeking an advantage in the race for AI technology.”
Much of the leaked data revolves around Google’s Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips, which power AI workloads alongside Nvidia GPUs, which can process, train, and run. models like Gemini.
The data that has come to light is the following:
- Between June 1, 2022 and April 17, 2023:
- Chip architecture and software specifications for TPU version 4.
- Chip architecture and software design specifications for TPU version 6.
- Specifications for GPU chips implemented in Google Supercomputing Data.
- Software design specifications for Google CMS that manage machine learning workloads on TPU and GPU chips in Google supercomputing data.
The leak was supposedly made “copying data from Google source files to the Apple Notes app on your Google-issued MacBook laptop” and then converting it into PDF notes to avoid detection by Google’s “data loss prevention systems.”
Artificial intelligence is the present and future of all companies
The news comes to the fore at a time when there is great cold War between different companies to position themselves at the center of world markets thanks to the development of their AI.
The Asian giant has not yet presented any AI, as Open AI or Google itself have been able to do, and even in Spain there are companies that have been able to develop complex language models.
The leak of this information can cause China cbegin to perfect and develop their algorithms with the aim of becoming a serious threat to companies that have been developing this type of technologies for years.
Time will tell what this matter turns out to be, but what seems clear is that the worst is not what is known, but what is still unknown.