ByteDance recently terminated an intern for “maliciously interfering” with one of its AI models during training. Yet, the company has played down the disruption that occurred. According to ByteDance, the person is an advertising technology intern and had nothing to do with the AI Lab, which oversees the large language model responsible for the popular Doubao chatbot.
The reported case did not dent the commercial AI operations of ByteDance as well as the significant financial damage that has been actually speculated and this included claims that it suffered $10 million in losses due to GPU disruptions. The company called this as exaggerated and misconstrued.
Although the intern’s actions did not create much chaos within the AI systems, ByteDance took disciplinary measures to inform the concerned university and relevant industry bodies. ByteDance is still investing highly in AI technologies: Doubao becomes the leading generative AI chatbot in China, rivaled only by other similar platforms such as ChatGPT.
