Google AI expert jumps ship for Apple

By

Siri
Siri needs all the help it can get.
Photo: Apple

One of Google’s top AI experts has left the company to join Apple’s special projects group.

Ian Goodfellow, who created an AI approach called general adversarial networks (GANs), was hired by Apple as a director of machine learning, adding another prominent Google AI expert to its growing team.

Apple has been doubling-down on its focus of AI recently as the it applies more of its major and minor products like Siri, Face ID and even self-driving cars. John Giannandrea, Google’s former head of AI, jumped ship to Apple last year to oversea the company’s AI efforts.

Before Google, Goodfellow worked at OpenAI, the AI firm funded by Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman and other top tech figures. Goodfellow’s GANs approach is widely cited in AI literature. It uses two networks (one generative network and one discriminative network) that are used to create audio, video and text with minimal input.

Goodfellow worked around GANs and security while at Google. His updated LinkedIN profile reflects that he moved to Apple in March. Neither Apple or Google have commented on the hiring.

Apple’s AI team has used the GANs approach created by Goodfellow in some of its work. The group regularly publishes its findings and research on Apple’s Machine Learning Journal.

Source: CNBC

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