He left in part due to Apple’s return-to-office policy, according to ‘Bloomberg.’
According to Bloomberg, an Apple executive who oversaw the company’s machine learning and artificial intelligence efforts has left the company in recent weeks, citing the company’s strict return-to-office policy. Ian Goodfellow is reportedly joining Google’s DeepMind team as an individual contributor, after leaving the tech giant for Apple a few years ago. According to his LinkedIn profile, Goodfellow has worked for Google in various capacities since 2013, including as a research scientist and a software engineering intern.
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Bloomberg says the former Apple exec referenced the policy in a note about his departure addressed to staff members. In April, Apple announced that it was going to start implementing its return-to-office policy on May 23rd and will be requiring employees to work in its offices at least three times a week.
The New York Times has just reported, though, that the company has softened its stance on remote work and will now launch a pilot that will see some employees come in to office only twice a week. Google has also started implementing a “hybrid work” plan that requires employees to physically work in its offices some days of the week, but Goodfellow may have taken a role that allows him more freedom.
Goodfellow supervised the engineers working on autonomous technology at Apple and developed a system that gave Google Maps the ability to automatically transcribe addresses from Street View car photos. However, he’s probably mostly known for inventing generative adversarial networks or GANs, which can be used to create deepfakes.
