A tweet by The Verge says that Ian Goodfellow, Apple’s director of machine learning, is leaving the company due to its return-to-work policy.
In a note to staff, he said “I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team.”
Goodfellow obtained his B.S. and M.S. in computer science from Stanford University and his Ph.D. in machine learning from the Université de Montréal. After graduation, he joined Google as part of the Google Brain research team. He left Google to join the newly founded OpenAI institute, but returned to Google Research in March 2017.
Goodfellow is best known for inventing generative adversarial networks, an approach to machine learning frequently used at Facebook. At Google, he developed a system enabling Google Maps to automatically transcribe addresses from photos taken by Street View cars and demonstrated security vulnerabilities of machine learning systems.
Some Apple employees are opposing the company’s plans to require them to return to the (physical) office.
Earlier this week CEO Tim Cook sent out a note to employees about a “hybrid” work schedule. Apple employees began returning to Apple Park last month, with the three-day in-office work policy being enacted on May 23.
