“Father of GAN” ran away from Apple, Cook repented: Home office may be retained

Welcome to the WeChat subscription number of “Sina Technology”: techsina

Source: Xinzhiyuan

The AI ​​industry is now an industry that integrates production, education and research.

The characteristic of this industry is that as long as anyone who writes textbooks and defines concepts can be popularized to the point where millions of students lose their hair, they will be scrambled by giants in the industry.

Yes, this includes but is not limited to Yann LeCun “Yan Lekun” teacher, “the father of GAN” Ian Goodfellow teacher and so on.

Daniel jumped from Apple to DeepMind

Teacher Ian Goodfellow has recently brought the spirit of “no father here, but a place for him” to the extreme: if the employer does not meet his own requirements, he will fire the employer, and then he will find the next big factory to continue to grow in about a week. Cattle.

After abruptly leaving Apple in early May 2022, Bloomberg reported on May 18 that he chose to join DeepMind, a well-known company owned by Google.

Of course, when such a big bull joins a certain company, it is generally not confirmed only once.

Bloomberg said in the report that DeepMind declined to comment for this story. But DeepMind’s “anonymous source” employees are more than willing to express the company’s excitement:

It’s great for Daniel to jump over, and it’s a big victory for our company. Even if he exists as an “individual contributor”, he will contribute to the company.

However, the specific position and level of Mr. Goodfellow in DeepMind has not yet been disclosed. The term “individual contributor” indicates that the two parties may still be negotiating, and Mr. Goodfellow is now a self-employed contractor.

Cook softened his tone: I didn’t say I had to go back to the factory

In view of Mr. Ian Goodfellow’s status in the AI ​​industry, his job-hopping should be so handsome that it has shocked the top management of the company.

In June 2022, at the Time Magazine Global Top 100 Forum held in New York, Mr. Cook, in front of the world, publicly retreated from Ian Goodfellow’s request to return to the factory and said, “Ah, we Still in the process of judging” with a muddy attitude.

Mr. Cook’s original words were: “Our company is now testing various measures to extract the advantages of integrating the two methods of returning to the factory and working from home. Our company runs the mother of this office transformation experiment because everyone is still It’s not clear how effective the various measures will be.”

Cook said that Apple’s various office policy experiments now focus on discovering patterns that combine the advantages of both face-to-face communication and virtual communication at home. This model will be significantly different from the existing various office policies.

“Our company is probably the first to say that the industry’s original model was wrong, and to fix it,” Apple’s CEO said.

Of course, the Apple CEO can’t slap Apple directly in the face. Cook said he personally still prefers “all kinds of opportunities between people and meetings.” As for virtual interactions in a home office, he said it’s “not inferior, but very different from a human meeting.”

And Mr. Cook’s skills in taking the opportunity to bring goods are also superb. While not directly commenting on when Apple’s AR device will be available, Cook said the technology “has the opportunity to enhance the conversation and human connection between colleagues in the company, rather than exclude it.”

As soon as the Daniel left, Apple admits to counseling: you can stay at home

Not only did the CEO’s tone become ambiguous, but as soon as Ian Goodfellow left, Apple immediately changed its policy.

On May 18, Bloomberg reported that Apple said in an internal memo provided by an anonymous source that it would delay its three-day-a-week requirement to return to the office, which was scheduled to take effect on May 23.

The memo said a recent rise in the number of Covid-19 cases was the reason for the delay, though it did not mention an exact date for when they intend to start the program again. Apple employees are still required to work two days a week in the office and are now required to wear masks in public areas.

It is said that Ian Goodfellow’s job-hopping was an important incentive for Apple to change its policy, and Goodfellow is the highest-level Apple employee who has so far jumped due to the remote work policy change.

This is a major blow for Apple, which is now working to reassure employees who are opposed to returning to the office.

Daniel wants to work at home, but the company doesn’t let him. How old is the company?

The reason why Ian Goodfellow suddenly announced his resignation from Apple this time can be explained by rewriting a ten-year old stalk that has been circulating on the Chinese Internet: “Rework will not be reworked, and will not be reworked in this life.”

In an email to Apple employees, Ian Goodfellow wrote: “I firmly believe that more flexible working is the best policy for my team.”

After the outbreak of the new crown, Apple began a two-year remote working policy.

Beginning on April 11, Apple employees began to return to the office to work one after another. Apple has taken a phased approach to its return to work plan.

At first, employees were required to come to work in person at least one day a week. On May 4, Apple raised the requirement to two days a week.

Starting May 23, employees will be required to work in the office three days a week. It’s the start of what Apple calls a “hybrid” work plan, which will require employees to come to the office every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

Apple has also reportedly given individual teams some flexibility, allowing team leaders to adjust policies as appropriate. Now, though, that may not include Goodfellow’s team.

The practice is said to have suffered a backlash within Apple.

On the water, the most quoted Daniel Ian Goodfellow said directly: You let me return to the office to work, it is better to let me go, I will go.

Under the water, Apple’s managers and executives are said to be lobbying internally to try to get the company to roll back its current “return to the office” policy.

According to Mr. Cook’s position, these lobbying should be successful.

In the life of a big bull, how many times can he return to Google

In fact, it can be seen from Mr. Goodfellow’s resume that the subsidiary of the Google system is simply his buffer and spare tire.

As long as there is a career change, Ian Goodfellow’s first choice must be to jump back to a subsidiary of Google, and then plan to choose another high branch.

After graduating with a Ph.D., Goodfellow first joined Google as a member of the “Google Brain” research group.

In March 2016, Goodfellow left Google and joined OpenAI, which was just established at the time.

In March 2017, he resigned from OpenAI and returned to Google as a research scientist.

After more than two years, in 2019, Goodfellow left Google again and joined Apple. Serves as the director of the machine learning special project group.

He has been with Apple since then until May 2022, before jumping back to DeepMind, a Google-owned subsidiary, again because of a rework policy.

Wu Enda’s apprentice, drinking wine and accompanying the girl to invent “GAN”

Goodfellow is so arrogant and has confidence.

However, in his early thirties, even if he is not a master in the industry, he can be regarded as a peak.

Google Brain research scientist, Apple’s machine learning director, the inventor of GAN, one of the authors of the “Flower Book”, any title is glittering.

Yes, the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), which is the source of the joy and pain of AI, was invented by him drinking beer and touching his girlfriend.

One evening in 2014, Goodfellow was drinking and celebrating with a recent doctoral student. After a while, a few of his friends asked him for help on a tricky project, working on a computer program that automatically generated pictures.

Previously, researchers have tried to use neural networks and algorithms that roughly mimic the neural network of the human brain, as generative models to autonomously create reasonable data.

But the result of this method is not very ideal. The resulting images are often lacking in quality, either blurry, or making mistakes such as a person’s face and one ear.

The idea of ​​Goodfellow’s friends is to perform complex data analysis on the elements that make up the picture, so that the machine can better generate pictures.

Goodfellow pondered the question over a beer. Suddenly he had an epiphany, why not put the two neural networks against each other?

His friends expressed doubts. But he believes that this is a feasible solution.

After a quick farewell to his friends, he returned home and found that his girlfriend had fallen asleep, which just gave him the opportunity to test his ideas.

He immediately began experimenting with programming and then testing the software he had designed himself. Unexpectedly, he succeeded once.

This is the earliest “GAN”.

In addition to the title of the father of “GAN”, he is also the author of “Flower Book”, which was originally called “Deep Learning”. It can be said to be one of the must-reads to get involved in the field of artificial intelligence.

Behind such a bright resume is the same impeccable academic background.

Goodfellow completed undergraduate and master’s degrees in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University, under the tutelage of AI gurus Wu Enda.

And his doctoral career, studied at the University of Montreal, Canada, under the tutelage of Yoshua Bengio (Joshua Bengio) and Aaron Courville (Aaron Courville), both of which are well-known computer scientists.

It’s astonishing that people with such glittering resumes are now working part-time jobs instead of being their own bosses…


(Disclaimer: This article only represents the author’s point of view and does not represent the position of Sina.com.)

This article is reproduced from: http://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-06-08/doc-imizmscu5727107.shtml
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.

Leave a Comment