
Apple Hires AI and Deep Learning Expert Ian Goodfellow - shamino
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/04/apple-hires-ai-expert-ian-goodfellow-from-google.html
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Despegar
Apple can probably poach all the AI people that don't want to work for a
weapons contractor. Doubt Apple's going to be moving beyond consumer products
anytime soon.

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kpU8efre7r
I hope they do. More job openings for me since I don't mind working for a
weapons contractor.

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hyperbovine
You're going to slot in for Ian Goodfellow?

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toomuchtodo
Nothing wrong with trying to punch above your weight class.

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ham_sandwich
I don’t work at FAANG, but the general sense I get is that while there is no
doubt top DL talent that should command mid six to seven figure salaries, it
seems that with AI programs stuffed at both the undergrad and grad levels that
things should cool off eventually.

More broadly, does success in academia usually translate to delivering
business value? Are these companies betting on these researchers to come up
with the next great DL architecture?

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chris11
I'm not in academia or at a FAANG, but I think that talented professors should
always have applicable skills. A professor successfully running a research lab
is basically running a small company. They need to raise grant money, and then
deliver results, all while needing to mentor their employees. Because most of
their workers will be students and leave after graduation.

So if you define top talent to be research lab or publication success I think
that top talent will always be attractive corporate RD, assuming there's a
match in the research area. I don't really know how these companies are
evaluating their RD, so delivering business value is another question.

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rad_gruchalski
Interesting when taking their other recent hire into consideration:
[https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1122410_apple-hires-
away...](https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1122410_apple-hires-away-teslas-
powertrain-chief)

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saagarjha
Or an even more relevant recent hire: [https://www.apple.com/leadership/john-
giannandrea/](https://www.apple.com/leadership/john-giannandrea/)

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threwu
someone once told me you can coast forever after a big hit in the tech world.
doesn't seem to be the case these days unless you jump from ship to ship.

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shamino
there's probably a correlation somewhere there. Usually if you do a big hit in
the tech world, you have hard work in your DNA.

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m0zg
Still won't help. Simple fact of life is: to attract research talent you have
to let your researchers publish (and not anonymously like they started doing
recently, but under their own names), and afford them considerable freedom in
what to publish. There's no way in hell Apple will do that, with or without
Goodfellow. Good for Ian, I suppose, but Apple will continue to languish in AI
until it reconsiders its stolid, old fashioned ways (and/or starts paying
crazy money to researchers so publishing ceases to matter as much).

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weaklearner
eh honestly a lot AI people might give up publishing for a little while to
work with/around goodfellow.

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m0zg
Why give up _anything_ and not go to e.g. Google Brain or FAIR or MSR instead?
All three labs have dozens of people of comparable caliber _each_. At this
point Apple is starting at a massive disadvantage, and they'd need to offer a
radically better game to catch up. Which is something they aren't prepared to
do.

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weaklearner
If your researched is focused on Gans/adversarial stuff the specificity of
working with goodfellow might out-weigh some other concerns. Also-hey-I'm not
trying to make this tradeoff. I am just saying I can imagine someone else
choosing to do so.

personally if I had offer from Google/MSR I'd take it over apple but I'd much
rather work for apple than facebook even if yann le cunn told me I was cooler
than sliced bread.

edit: also re-reading your comment I bet apple is willing to pay that crazy
money. Goodfellow probably has compensation in 1-10 million range...

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m0zg
7 figures is table stakes for top people in this field. The question is, what
the distribution is like for the kinds of folks they need to hire to get the
actual work done.

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garysahota93
Until Apple makes ALL of their services cross-platform, it's really hard to
justify getting excited. I know in the US Apple has a strong presence, but if
they truly want their services to exceed, they will need to go to Windows /
Desktop Linux / Web / Android to compete. They were able to do it with Apple
Music. Why not with Siri, iMessage, and the slew of new services they've
introduced?

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opportune
Why would they do that? I think a core part of their business strategy is
creating cool synergies and features between products but restricting those
features to Apple devices. It makes consumers buy into the apple ecosystem.

They don't want to support Siri and iMessage on non-apple devices. Those are
free services, why would they give them away without requiring you to buy
their devices?

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person_of_color
Congrats, this must be quite a sum.

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rajacombinator
Apple can’t even show my iMessages in chronological order properly. Maybe they
can train a neural net to figure it out for them.

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gubbrora
I wonder if this means that Apple's positioning as the privacy focused choice
is coming to an end.

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throwawaymath
Wow. I'm surprised CNBC writes articles about the career movements of "AI and
Deep Learning Experts." How many of their readers care about the director-
level hires of large tech companies?

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sabertoothed
Many, to answer your question.

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throwawaymath
That doesn't answer my question at all; why the snark?

