The gold rush into AI has sparked frenzied and at times misguided behavior from companies, from simply deploying AI to write badly written articles to firing therapists and replacing them with bots that give questionable advice.
But perhaps the frenzy is fiercest among AI tech companies themselves, which are in a pitched battle to grab talent and money.
Now add stealing corporate intellectual property to this list. Employees at Arthur AI, a company that helps other businesses optimize their AI models, are pointing fingers at rival company Arize AI for trying to steal corporate secrets during a Zoom presentation, according to the New York Times.
This kind of behavior wouldn’t be entirely surprising as since the dawn of the tech industry, rival companies have fought bitterly over ideas — like the storied rivalry between Apple and Microsoft.
Another recent example is FriendliAI, a Korean tech company that’s suing another AI business, Hugging Face, for alleged patent infringement.
But stealing intellectual property during a Zoom meeting? It’s not a good look, especially as the topic of ethics dominates the conversation about AI.
The accusation is that Yan Fung, who claimed to be the head of technology at a startup called OneOneThree, contacted Arthur AI last year and asked for a demo, according to the NYT.
During a Zoom presentation on Arthur AI’s technology, the story goes, Fung said that another colleague, Karina Patel, would join the meeting. But when the other colleague showed up, the name of Aparna Dhinakaran appeared on the screen, the NYT reports — the name of the founder of rival company Arize AI.
We are sure that Zoom intrusion is more of clumsy approach and just the tip of the iceberg for what’s to come.
From The Shadows Emerges Knowledge