Report: Apple ML exec that left over in-person work policy joining Alphabet’s DeepMind

Abner Li | May 17 2022 - 5:39 pm PT

According to Bloomberg today, Ian Goodfellow, who oversaw machine learning at Apple before quitting due to the in-person work policy, is joining Alphabet’s DeepMind.

Goodfellow started at Google as a software engineering intern “in 2013 and was a senior research scientist at Google Brain upon leaving in March 2016. After a year at Open AI, he returned to Google for two years.

In March of 2019, he was hired by Apple as director of machine learning in the Special Projects Group. It emerged at the start of May that he left over the company’s return to work policy that eventually requires spending three days a week at the office, though that was delayed today. As 9to5Mac notes:

Apple has reportedly given some flexibility to individual teams, allowing managers to adapt policies as they see fit. This, however, doesn’t appear to have been the case for Goodfellow’s team.

Ian Goodfellow is joining DeepMind, which is part of Alphabet though it works to improve Google products. According to Bloomberg:

Goodfellow’s jump to Google is a coup for the DeepMind division, which is bringing him on as an individual contributor, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the hiring isn’t yet public. Goodfellow is known as one of the foremost machine learning researchers, and the move is a reunion of sorts.

DeepMind declined to comment, with Goodfellow known as the inventor of generative adversarial networks (GANs), which can be used to produce photorealistic deep fakes and has other uses. Hiring in AI and ML is highly competitive, and Alphabet is considered to have laxer in-person policies than Apple.

That said, Google believes that in-person work drives collaboration/spontaneity and is keen on bringing employees back. It just opened its new Bay View campus with that in mind, but is better at granting WFH (work from home) exceptions.