Netizens Demand University of ByteDance Intern Take Disciplinary Action Against Student Involved in AI Sabotage Scandal

Over the weekend, reports of Bytedance firing an intern has circulated on Chinese social media.

Social media posts alleged that the intern disrupted the AI model's training by inserting code into a system running on thousands of GPUs.

Rumours are spreading that he managed to corrupt over 800 H100 GPUs over the one month he was in the company.

The intern was reportedly frustrated by the lack of resources allocated to their department, with the alleged sabotage causing damages worth tens of millions of dollars.

Reports of an intern sabotaging ByteDance’s AI model circulated on Chinese social media over the weekend, but the tech giant has dismissed the claims as exaggerated and inaccurate.

The AI model at the center of the rumors is Doubao, ByteDance’s ChatGPT alternative, built on its advanced AI architecture.

ByteDance, however, denied these claims, stating the interference did not affect its core commercial products, online operations, or large language models.

The South China Morning Post, which initially reported the story, identified the intern as part of the commercialization technology team responsible for developing advertising technologies.

ByteDance also told the BBC that inaccuracies are present in both social media and media reports and rejected claims of nearly $10 million in losses due to the incident.

Identity of intern and what happened to him?

But this is not the end of the story. Netizens online have also started to dig into who this intern is and provide even more further information on the case. It was alleged that the intern's name is Tian Keyu, a student pursuing his masters at Peking Univeristy.

Netizens also found out that after he was fired from ByteDance, the school took no other disciplinary action for what he had done. This has sparked a heated discussion online, with some demanding heavier punishment on the student.

One of the netizens wrote online

"The school has taken no other actions against Tian... Are they being too lenient on him?"

After reports out, Tian has reportedly denied any wrongdoing and denied all allegations. But it seems that netizens has also found voice recording and other evidence of his wrong doings. They are also pressuring the university to take disciplinary actions on this student.