ChatGPT Just Caught a Spy Stealing From OpenAI

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ChatGPT just discovered and arrested a spy in OpenAI's own HQ. And that's the least craziest thing I'm going to say on this entire episode, because this whole story is crazy. It starts off with an unknown individual planting an audio listening spyware device in the back of a television wrapped in toilet paper. Why it's wrapped in toilet paper, I have no idea. But the important part is the conference room. Why do we care? Well, a bunch of really important executives and business partners at OpenAI meet to discuss proprietary information, secret product plans. So you can imagine if that information got into the wrong hands of a person, a company, or maybe even another country, that could probably become a bit of a problem. So OpenAI handed over the case to the FBI and their own internal model, who ended up ratting on the individual who had planted that device. Kash Patel, the head of the FBI said this is the Bureau's utmost priority at the moment, that AI has finally become an importance or asset of national security and risk. Imagine if James Bond, 007, had access to Fable 5.1 back in the day. He'd be a bit of a beast. But also imagine if his enemies also had access to this model. That's what we're going to uncover in today's episode of In the Loop, brought to you by Qualcomm.

So the story starts off two weeks ago, September 30th, when an OpenAI employee discovered a device plugged into the back of a television in an executive conference room. And it was wrapped in toilet paper for God knows what reason. But upon recovering this device, it was handed over to the security team at OpenAI. They started looking at it and they were thinking, hmm, this looks like a USB stick, but it has this weird circuitry that's kind of attached to it. So it seems like a bit of a hack job. What on earth is this device? And so they started to examine it and they asked their own internal AI model to uncover what this device might be used to. And they discovered three particular things. One, it had very heavy cryptography designed around its entire thing. So accessing the information that this device had was near impossible. Number two, the device was designed to be continuously recording audio, that it would also be triggered to start recording audio when someone would start speaking. So it seems very intentional that this device was to try and spy on conversations that were happening in that particular room. And then number three, any kind of data that got extracted from this device that could be transferred to your computer to view it or review it or listen to it was under heavy encryption as well, which meant that the data transfer layer had been very meticulously designed. And so OpenAI kind of like looked at this and thought, this seems like an attempt to spy on us, so we should probably hand this case over to the FBI, give them access to this internal model or work with them at least to try and figure out what the hell is going on. So OpenAI continued their internal investigations whilst they gave it to the FBI. And very soon, using their own internal model of, I don't know, GPT 6.5, GPT 7, call it whatever their latest model is, the one that solved all the math stuff, definitely go check that episode I made, that very same model named someone. It traced back the entire circuitry design of this device and who was most likely to have planted the device and uncovered a name. So OpenAI had an idea of who it might have been, but let the FBI continue on their investigation. But while they were doing this, they also decided to plant a camera in almost the exact same position where the USB stick was. So in the event that someone who planted it, came back to look at it, they would be able to capture the suspect red-handed. And that's exactly what happened a few days later when the suspect returned, had a look behind the TV and the camera captured exactly who the culprit was. And on the same day that this culprit was captured on this camera, security team discovered a bag left behind by the culprit by accident in the printing room. They went through it and they discovered a second device that looked very familiar to the one that they found behind the TV. So they just took the bag, put it in lost and found, but they took the device. They were trying to capture this individual red-handed. They also wanted to figure out what on earth was going on, what this individual might be using this information for. So they, again, were keeping hush and quiet. And they handed over the device and the information that they had to the FBI. Now, this individual discovered that his bag had gone missing and went to lost and property to try and find it. And he found the bag. So he felt pretty good about it, except that he noticed that the second device was missing. And he also noticed that the device behind the TV, when he went to go check it, was also missing. So he reported that there had been a theft of his own property. But by that time, the FBI and the OpenAI team was already on him and issued an arrest or warrant for his arrest the exact next day. Upon arresting this guy, they discovered that the suspect, his wife and another family member of the suspect had a one-way ticket to Saudi. So he was going to fly out with his family and likely never return because presumably he thought he'd been busted. So the guy got arrested and he has been internally investigated and being put through court or whatever all that stuff is. He was arrested by the FBI and Kash Patel, who's the leader of the FBI and his team has been handling it since then. But OpenAI has come out with an official statement giving a high level idea of what's been going on, but never named any names. Who has been naming names is pretty much every other media publication out there, which gets to the next section, who the hell did this and why did they do this? The man's name is Abdul Rahman Al-Fozan. He's a 35-year-old Saudi national who's lived in the US since 2020, but he's also worked at OpenAI for over a year on the product team. So he's like a product slash engineer. He's worked on multiple product releases at OpenAI, likely a core employee, been there for a while as the valuations have increased, so likely his equity is worth quite a bit. This is a person that people actually know at the company. If you look at his LinkedIn history, he's worked on things like AI agents, which is important for the next bit of this story. What was he doing, how did he create this device, and why was he trying to use this device in that secret room? Let me take you back six weeks prior to this device being discovered. This individual, Abdul Rahman, queried an internal personal agent at OpenAI. Guess what he asked that agent? Hey, where do high-powered execs at OpenAI have meetings? Also, business partners, where do these execs have meetings with those business partners? Can you tell me the exact rooms? This guy was literally asking an internal version of ChatGPT, which the security team and any OpenAI employee or anyone with a brain cell could get access to and see who was querying it. That's the device that he, or rather, that's the agent that he used to try and target and locate an executive room. So he finds this room, he finds the perfect room. It seats six people and more. They only have discussions about proprietary research, designs, product releases, things that you don't want getting out to the public. But there's a problem. He can't book the room, he can't get access to the room. So that's only bookable by execs and their secretaries. So he tries to then devise a plan as to how he can be a listen in on the conversations there. And he comes up with a bright idea. I need to create an audio device that can spy and listen in to the conversations that are happening in there. But I don't know how to build that device. You know what might be useful? Let me ask AI.