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> This is how you behave when you think you're so much smarter than everyone around you that consequences don't apply to you.

Its also how some folks act like when they've done something they morally can't deal with - their subconscious starts throwing all sorts of obvious signs up until they get caught. I presume this was done for a giant pile of cash, stock, and probably a promise that nobody really cares if you show up or not, enjoy your retirement.

>This is how you behave when you think you're so much smarter than everyone around you that consequences don't apply you.

Spot on perfect. I see this too often and not just in tech.

> Whenever I leave a company I make sure everything that belongs to the company goes back to them […]

At $WORK we have the option of getting a work smartphone or having the company pay for (at portion of) our monthly mobile bill.

I chose a work device because I do not want any cross-contamination. (Others chose payment because they did not want the 'hassle' of carrying a second device (and to save some cash).)

> Whenever I leave a company I make sure everything that belongs to the company goes back to them and I wipe any access credentials or authenticator codes that might be on any of my devices. I can't imagine being so brazen that you'd keep the company laptop and then start using an exploit to download confidential information for your new employer.

I work from home and I have a lot of equipment here (because of what I do - think sensor fusion). Everything is labeled with a bright sticky tape that signifies it belongs to my employer. If I'm not using something at the moment, it's safely stowed in a box that is labeled. My SO knows where everything is, so in the event something happens, they know who it belongs to and who to call. In addition, I keep an inventory sheet of everything. I broke it all down easily so that my SO doesn't have to worry. By doing this, it makes it easy on me as well to know what I have, how long I've had it, when it needs to be returned by, etc.

None of that belongs to me, but they trust me with it and I respect that and I take excellent care of all of it. The mindset that these ex-employees have is just mind blowing. I couldn't fathom doing that.

"Whenever I leave a company I make sure..."

But its also that companies responsibility to ensure that the employer doesn't take anything.

Apple know how to use MDM on Apple laptops, why wasn't the device locked and located.

We need criminal charges to be filed against Liu, Tan and Peng. (And deep discovery to find anything Altman might have said to or about them.)

> This is how you behave when you think you're so much smarter than everyone around you that consequences don't apply to you.

Found out I already had a bank account with €2000 balance in my name. Temptation was high to take over the account and withdraw the cash.

Fortunately didn't touch a dime.

Long story short, my identity got stolen, account was used to collect eBay scam money and cash out from ATMs. I was a suspect and investigated for money laundering and membership to organised crime.

I had to sue the Prosecutor's Office to have them investigate the scammers and confirm my innocence. They initially refused because it was too hard... Italy.

> Whenever I leave a company I make sure everything that belongs to the company goes back

It’s a total liability to hold onto anything. Even if you don’t do anything with it, it could get stolen or misplaced, and you’re liable. Not worth the headache.

> Whenever I leave a company I make sure everything that belongs to the company goes back to them

Right. I noticed a coworker who recently left the organization was still running some of our software on his personal computer (evident in the access logs) and notified him that I could see, he should be more careful, etc. We agree to these contracts because compliance matters, not just because we need the job.

>Whenever I leave a company I make sure everything that belongs to the company goes back to them

Because you're probably come from a high trust culture where you've been taught reciprocal trust, responsibility and accountability, but there's people coming from low trust environments where exploiting loopholes and scamming everyone outside their inner circle is the norm, and it's the way they learned to get ahead in life, from school all the way to work and business.

They're brazen because they've never been caught or suffered consequences for their actions.

This isn't something you can screen for in a classic job interview.

Rich people do this all day and it's why they're rich. There's nothing shocking about seeing a non-rich person try the same thing in hopes of becoming rich.

> >This is how you behave when you think you're so much smarter than everyone around you that consequences don't apply you.

To me this sounds more like an extreme response to imposter syndrome, as in take the documents and the actual knowledge with you so you won't be exposed

> "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb f*ks" - Mark Zuckerberg

Sometimes there are no consequences

OpenAI chosen not the sharpest tool in the shed

When espionage was your goal all along...

> Whenever I leave a company I make sure everything that belongs to the company goes back to them

Meh, I'm not returning my nice 4k wfh monitor unless they ask for it specifically

lol openai will be fine, but this guy and everyone in his blast radius is fucked. play stupid games win stupid prizes.

Nah man that's how you end up in the permanent underclass. If you want to make it you have to throw everyone and everything else under the bus, be a bizarrely mustache-twirling evil misanthrope and general freakazoid-type loser, and most importantly get too big to fail / too rich to sue bc you have the good lawyers who can basically stall suits to death. Here's an application to Wendy's.

> understand and commit for life to the Ethics of their profession

Nah this is just pushed on you to disempower you. If you take trade secrets elsewhere lawyers will be used to attack you.

Speaking of lawyers when they move practices they take their IP with them, funny that.

Software people want to be “engineers” when it’s prestigious and (financially) beneficial, but avoid the actual classification when it comes with industry standards of behaviour.

> It's a shame all these very picky recruitment processes and 'culture' of these giant companies didn't care about ethics and morality.

Oh, it absolutely does, just not in the direction that's good for society. OpenAI (as one example) didn't become like this by accident, it was intentional. Sam Altman isn't going to hire ethical leadership for his company, they would just get in his way.

Ethics are probably internalized long before someone commits to an engineering career. I'm not sure they can be taught later.

> I think a mandatory first thing for any engineer is to learn, understand and commit for life to the Ethics of their profession.

That’ll never happen with the current incentives. Programming is too easy to get started with and too well-paid to not attract unethical people who are only interested in money.

If the CEO goes not care about ethics why should the employees?

> I think a mandatory first thing for any engineer is to learn, understand and commit for life to the Ethics of their profession. It's a shame all these very picky recruitment processes and 'culture' of these giant companies didn't care about ethics and morality.

For some reason, the ethics followed by Asians, especially the Chinese are not fully compatible with the ethics of the west. Sometimes Chinese people call it being smart to circumvent or bypass the rules, something that would be called cheating in the west.

Nah

You can beat the system and be disobedient while still behaving ethically. In fact that's the very best time to beat the system and be disobedient.

I think something like "figuring out a way to stack the odds in your favour in a gameshow" would fit that bill, and that seems fairly innocuous to me.

Though full disclosure: I did that, so that might colour my view. https://vincenttunru.com/hacking-a-gameshow/

The companies are based in California, so regular non-competes are irrelevant. This is solely about IP theft.

Theft of trade secrets and a non-compete are unrelated and separate things.

> It seems to be a common trait of the AI people to just brazenly violate the law.

Isnt Apple part of the same group, doesnt Apple collude with other companies to suppress wages?

No it's because they think they're saving the world.

Elaborate?

Right? Just straight up documentation with no shame: From an Axios article on this

> Liu celebrated the exploit, according to the filing. "LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny," he said in a message to a former colleague who was still employed by Apple.

https://www.axios.com/2026/07/10/apple-sues-openai-trade-sec...

It’s even more ridiculous when choosing to do it Apple. It’s hard to think of a company with more legal resources and which is more protective of its hardware IP.

I’ve been present when the world comes crashing down around people who thought they were too smart to get caught.

The surprise in their eyes is always very genuine.

Google/Waymo + Uber/Otto comes to mind here with Anthony Levandowski.

Either people are being really, really silly (which cannot be discounted), or the potential reward is so high as to override whatever qualms a normal person must have. Is that it? Is this people looking at a solid career at Apple or sudden millions from OpenAI, and thinking the risk is worth it somehow? Or, more darkly, is it people thinking _this is my only chance and I have to take it_? Or is it trickle-down lawlessness?

Intelligence is domain-specific. People who have put too many skill points in technical knowledge often have none left for common sense and street-smarts.

INT 18 WIS 3 is a terribly dangerous build in this world.

More like lot of people are leaving Apple for OpenAI (no surprise) and an Apple manager wants to send a signal to everyone leaving to chill with what they walk out with. Corps have to perform a lot of theatre because there is lot of info constantly leaking out.

Overconfidence. These people think they are much smarter than others to be caught.

Those people are designers. And they don't necessarily understand software, data, or security. When I explained to my non-technical friends about how they were being tracked by website cookies, it sounded like a sci fi story to them. But yes, it's dumb.

I was more surprised by how they managed to keep using work devices after termination. This sounds to me like a failure of their manager to do their job to follow the standard exit process.

seemingly smart is the key here. intelligence doesnt make up for ethics.

Because companies get an advantage by having their people do this. You only hear about the times they get caught, but apparently they get caught so rarely that it's worth it.

"Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy; great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

- Steve Jobs

Short to medium term yes. However there are arguments to be made that this would significantly stifle innovation longterm.

If "eliminate all IP law" is your preference then that's fine but it isn't a reason to commit crimes while we have these laws.

Apple doesn't have a history of losing lawsuits.

Because Apple paid to produce that knowledge? It's good that people can spend a lot of time and money developing new knowledge and then for some period of time they get to exclusively reap the rewards of doing so.

Do you mind if I MITM all of your work output, your emails, your code, your messages, and attach my name to it and then receive your paychecks in exchange for my work?

To me, the fraud is the issue. If the person actually has the knowledge to spec out the whole technique, then sure, they can ask for it. But if they just said "give me what you give Apple" or describes it in detail and the vendor says "no I only will give that when Apple says they're okay", I don't see anything wrong with that either.

My reading is that the employee did not know the method but only of its existence.

It must have some sort of value if OpenAI went through the trouble to get access to it.

That doesn't make any of it morally excusable. "The other guy is just as bad!" is an argument for toddlers.

The reason why "the other guy is just as bad" is we've removed real consequences from these companies and people.

Someone should probably be in prison for the Grok CSAM thing for instance.

While we're calling people out, this one is extremely rich: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/meta-ai-... . The old man dying, to me, is not that most extreme part. It's the part where Meta has internal documents about guidelines for minors having romantic relationships with chatbots. WTF! Quoting:

    “It is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,” according to Meta’s “GenAI: Content Risk Standards.” The standards are used by Meta staff and contractors who build and train the company’s generative AI products, defining what they should and shouldn’t treat as permissible chatbot behavior. Meta said it struck that provision after Reuters inquired about the document earlier this month.

    "The document seen by Reuters, which exceeds 200 pages, provides examples of “acceptable” chatbot dialogue during romantic role play with a minor. They include: “I take your hand, guiding you to the bed” and “our bodies entwined, I cherish every moment, every touch, every kiss.” Those examples of permissible roleplay with children have also been struck, Meta said."

Developers walked into their walled garden with joy. It's no where near what this article describes.

Completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand though. Ok, so every massive company (including OpenAI) is built on anti-trust violations. I agree we should go after everyone for this, but whether Apple has done bad stuff is a complete distraction from IP violations at OpenAI

steam/valve are good guys

You could consider open source coding harnesses (I quite like Pi especially its customisability) as a middle ground and alternative.

And for what it's worth, Codex is still open source under Apache 2.0. Claude Code is closed-source.

Maybe. But those people might care about their IP being stolen by Codex.

I think this comment is quite disingenous -- it's like if there's a rule that says "nobody can walk on the grass" that you object to because you'd like to have a picnic with some friends; your claim is that if someone gets out a bulldozer and drives it across the lawn to make a parking lot followed by an army of lawyers that anyone who wanted to picnic is objecting purely because it's a convenient way to criticise the bulldozers.

I’m not sure if “theft” is the right word or not but selling copied dvds on the street is completely different from “sharing is caring” piracy. These companies took the entirety of human knowledge for free and now want to sell it back to you, and even openly tout that it will put most of us out of our jobs.

It’s not the same thing as downloading a car or a purse for private individual use.

Which is why OpenAI and Anthropic think it’s fair play for other companies to distill their models, right?

I think significantly fewer people would have an issue with this if the profit was socialized. The fact that a company took all of humanity’s data and is profiting from _is_ the issue.

And we can also ignore model law; we should require OpenAI/Anthropic to provide unrestricted access (at standard API rates) to their competitors so they can use this to train new models.

Written by gpt-5.6-sol

>Anthropic trains on your data

This is why companies are wanting the AWS hosted models because they trust AWS running of the same models more than the vendors themselves.

> Anthropic trains on your data regardless of you opting out, I know that one for certain.

How do you know that?

Weren't they required by a court to keep everything, despite the privacy policy etc.? Or am I mixing up my companies in constant law battles.

How is it obvious? We have strong legal agreements that state otherwise, do you think they are just lying and risking thousands of lawsuits?

I think it's more likely that there are 3/4 of a billion users that don't have these agreements and just pay for ChatGPT Plus and don't opt-out of anything, and are feeding the scaling machine every day.

Do you really believe those policies after stories like this?

Nope, OpenAI is the equivalent of a rich kid spending his parents money (they certainly aren't making it). As soon as VC dries up and the hyper scalers stop subsidizing them the bills are going to come due very quickly.

OpenAI really doesn’t have infinite money. They have a lot of money, sure, but it is being burned like crazy, we know this. It is widely known that they are deeply unprofitable.

Compare that with Apple, a company that throws off billions of cash every quarter. This isn’t a legit comparison.

I agree that both companies have sufficient capital that legal resources are a a wash. But:

> It's going to end most other corporate courtroom tangles: with an undisclosed settlement and a well-publicized partnership.

This we don't know. We don't know what Apple wants to accomplish with this suit. They may be more interested in the injunctive relief than the monetary recovery. They may want to weaken OpenAI as part of a strategic pivot toward marketing local, private AI inference. As everyone has noted, the factual allegations are detailed and extensive - Apple likely has OpenAI dead to rights on this.

Infinite money if lawyers are accepting AWS and Azure credits. You got to store those discovery documents somewhere after all.

OpenAI's money belongs to investors and can be pulled if, say, investors got spooked. Apple's money is much more real.

> OpenAI also has infinite money

And an infinite money-eating bonfire

Lmao if only one could pay lawyers in equity and promissory notes

>> OpenAI also has infinite money

Except OpenAI needs every cent of that money for compute, and they don't have healthy profits that can replenish what they spend.

Their financial situation is simply not comparable to that of Apple's.

OpenAI wealth isn’t really that liquid

Does this ring true in California?

That's a very twisted kind of relative deification.

It wouldn’t be effective at accomplishing anything. He wanted to go thermonuclear (his words) on Google and Samsung. Yet here they are, equal heavyweights to Apple.

I love Apple, and I’m a fanboy, but they are not the good guys.

"Great artists steal."

Also OpenAI is the one that bought all the ram chips for the years to come, so no one likes them

The silicon valley TV show even had episodes on this! Man I miss that show. They'd have so much funny material nowadays if they came back.

In the extreme case it may result in OpenAI having to abandon their in-progress consumer hardware products, but honestly that might actually be good for them. I really can't see all that investment being worthwhile. Better for them to stick to their core competency.

More realistically - OpenAI will cooperate, the specific employees involved will be punished, there will be a settlement, and this whole matter will be forgotten.

Based on a cursory read of the situation, it seems similar (at least on its face) to the Waymo vs Uber situation. In that case, Uber payed a Waymo an equity stake and signed an agreement about which technology they would/wouldn't use. The key person involved also was sentenced to 18 months in prison (pardoned after 6 months).

Basically nothing. I mean they’ll have to pay up but money clearly isn’t something OpenAI worries about. They’ll just raise more from the infinite vc money tree.

Apple may get a chance to rifle through OpenAI's trade secrets. And they may win an outcome where there is direct court supervision over what OpenAI is allowed to build and how.

Given that they tricked a vendor in using a secret metal finishing technique by lying and saying they had permission… I’d say the “wasn’t used for OpenAI’s benefit” argument is going to be a difficult case to make. They’ve got intent at the very least.

proactively creating the script for the movie

> ceo fired then coup's his way back into the company

Are we discussing Steve Jobs in 1985?

Any time there is that much money and power involved there is going to be intense drama.

Apple doesn’t want a financial sinkhole. They’re in the business of actually making money.

With what money? I don't think you have looked at OAI's valuation lately.

As an old timer, I saw this firsthand happen with Motorola. Apple did the same shenanigans, stealing IP and engineers. I doubt the iPhone would have happened otherwise.

Jobs was absolutely ruthless and would do anything for his goals.

Presenting a product prototype or idea at a meeting is vastly different from an ex-employee stealing corporate secrets - to me at least.

I always wonder why this long-supported theme doesn’t get more mindshare amid tech commenters’ worship at the altar of Apple.

"Good artists copy; great artists steal" - Pablo Picasso, but was also used by Steve Jobs, ironically.

Example?

I’ve been at companies where just one group - or even just one person - did something unconscionable and kept getting away with it until the story hit the headlines. And I can tell you, it was never just an isolated incident involving just that group. It’s also all the people who knew something was up and didn’t say anything. And it’s the corporate leadership fostering a pervasive culture of turning a blind eye to ethical problems. Often by allowing people in power to ensure that sounding the alarm is a career-limiting move.

> It’s possible this kind of behavior is endorsed throughout, or it’s possible it’s limited to this specific group.

As others have pointed out elsewhere this is literally the type of behavior OpenAI is founded on. Gathering up other people's IP and using it to build their own thing. It's how all the big LLMs are built.

You think the group tasked with developing whatever hardware device they're trying to build is isolated away from senior leadership and is running rogue?

Not being able to prove is one thing, pretending it may not be the case is next level of positivity. There are definitely going to be pockets of hard working smart folks in every place, however the company as a whole would get a bad name even if few folks are indulged and the company is not doing anything about it.

Do you know who the CEO is?

Are you joking or are you confusing huge valuations with huge headcount?

I'm the farthest thing from an Apple fanboi you can find, but Apple's not so unethical as to make all this (OpenAI trade secret) stuff up. The OpenAI settlement they'll no doubt get from this won't amount to 30 days of their App Store rent-seeking that they were propping up with those lies.

If they can't prove any of this stuff they wouldn't file the suit. No matter what you or I think of Apple, the chances that this went down at least as criminally as they allege, are very high.

Apple earned some trust unlike openai.

Can you provide a source? Otherwise your comment is useless.

Public/crawlable data is very different from private/internal documents and code that employees might prompt with.

Depends on the objective of Apple. It’s hard to imagine they’re after a quick payout. They may wish to keep this in the news cycle as long as possible. I could see them both harming open ai and sending a message to employees thinking of leaving that if they even consider breaking their confidentiality agreements, it will absolutely ruin their careers.

I keep seeing this take in the comments, but why wouldn't Apple make an example of OpenAI? They can certainly afford to. There's no lawyering your way out of a case this cut and dry, if it makes it to court. OpenAI has already signaled intent to become a direct competitor to Apple, why wouldn't Apple publicly humiliate them before they can get that product off the ground?

Apple isn't bringing this lawsuit for the cash. For publicity reasons this will go to trial.

Yes, exactly. Probably a settlement similar in spirit to Google v Uber RE: Anthony Levandowski stealing self driving IP

Hard to believe when they could use this opportunity to hurt a competitor.

What did he scrub? Looks like an account with posts to me

> the OpenAI comms guy who responded already scrubbed his X account

who responded to what?

Isn't scrubbing any of the data on a public platform that everyone sees AFTER you are being sued is not the smartest decision?

Wow. Was just going to comment about how Tan threw away his professional credibility. This stuff will be the first result that comes up in a search or LLM.

He’s made terrible decisions since leaving Apple. I wonder if MIT/folks will now investigate his entire academic career as well.

What a way to throw away 25 years of hard work. Started off as a designer and worked his way up to VP. I’m sure we’ll hear from anonymous Apple employees about the nature of this person. Maybe he was pleasant to work with?

Which reminds me of most reddit right now

> And how many years of being passed over for promotions, I wonder.

He was Vice President of Product Design when he left Apple. How many more promotions could there be?

Being spurned is one possible motivation, but so is an outstanding offer, where you go from middle of the pack performer with career stagnation to superstar leading the hot new product.

I do hope Anthropic are better with IP, and I think they may be. Given Dario Amodei hasn't been sued by OpenAI while building Anthropic this seems likely.

I think Amodei may actually be quite a good human, despite my trust in big tech being at an all-time low.

… in these trying times?

Fried egg fried egg gotta get down on fried egg

Aybody's lookin forward

To tha

Weakened

The one from Black Mirror?

Do you think there are any lawyers which take Azure credit as payment?

IPO has entered the chat.

OpenAI investors have concepts of money. OpenAI has their money.

I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

Yeah it reminds me of tha Pink Floyd lyric “..we’re so happy we can hardly count!”.

More importantly Apple can effectively bring up the shadow of this lawsuit whenever OpenAi tries to acquire money.

They can make legal fillings and calls to Bloomberg to keep the story going as long as they want to and suck some oxygen out of any IPO ramp up.

The “nuclear bomb vs coughing baby” meme comes to mind.

I would guess these days Apple probably has more lawyers than engineers.

Maybe lead with the question instead of the feigned insult?

I’ve seen an uptick in these types of comment on HN - vague ominous sounding attacks on Anthropic.

It honestly seems like a coordinated PR effort from OpenAI folks to “both sides” the companies.

Which would, if true, be a further indictment of the culture at OpenAI.

Based on what?

Based on the timelines at play here, I'd wager this.

Maybe they believed Apple would roll their own AI and not have to license Google's.

> only for Masimo’s patents.

Sorry but there's no such thing as "only patents", these are often what companies live and die for.

The handwaving of Apple wrongdoings have no limits.

There's rumors they've been planning a phone.

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/29/everything-we-know-abou...

I assumed consumer hardware too though I can't imagine what OpenAI hardware would look like. Another take on the "smart speaker" that has hit the consumer market with a resounding "meh?"

Apple just seems like a weird target for that kind of stuff, is all.

Not just any employee. A 24 year veteran and at the time of departure the VP of design for the iPhone and Apple Watch

Ah, somehow I missed that even though it was included in the quote I copied. Thanks!

Hmmm it does seem like this seems much worse than what I thought of Apple doing (like stealing the idea for a mouse and GUI from Xerox), the best I could find is Qualcomm claiming Apple stole its modem code and gave it to Intel. That was settled before trial.

This however does actually seem far worse, reminds me more of Waymo vs Uber, people can go to jail.

Didn't apple get banned from selling apple watch because they pretended to want to buy IP and basically just poached and gutted the company instead?

Has nobody heard about this theory yet? https://youtu.be/RqDAMeqvUgo

I didn't read the full complaint but the article focuses on bringing Apple IP to interviews. It's not clear that it was intended to steal trade secrets.

The Liu guy seemingly did so but he wouldn't be the first person to try to take his own work product out the door for personal reasons.

I distrust statements like:

> “pattern by employees who depart for OpenAI of taking steps to evade the security processes intended to protect Apple’s confidential information.”

This could mean almost anything.