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Comment by brookst | Hacker News Reader

I have no knowledge of the players and their comparative credibility, but this “ethical challenges” piece sure makes Keyu Tian out to be an insanely talented intern. Sabotaging pytorch source code via random seeds? Understanding that Docker containers were not version controlled? Stealing corp GPU time for personal projects? Setting up login backdoors?

All this as an intern? That’s one multi-talented evil genius if true.

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He's a graduate student with multiple influential papers, including NeurIPS best paper award here that might change how to do image / video generation, I think he can figure out docker and tweak a few lines of python.

It’s more the black hat expertise I’m referring to. Knowing that containers aren’t versioned, and that random seeds are a a good attack vector.

Of course he knows python. But apparently also a very accomplished systems thinker who can apply it to a different domain.

No it's not, anyone who ever used docker knows that the images don't get committed and setting random seeds is ML 101 for anyone who is trying to run repeatable experiments.

This all was described before, and acted on by ByteDance.

And let's be real, there's an inflation of what "intern" means in academia, finance and elsewhere like FAANG. They're often doing a job of an FTE in less-prestigious employers, just that it's maybe not directly expected to pay off.

I hope that person is paying you for this positive PR spin!

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