While I think you make valid points in general, they don't apply here for two reasons: 1) Russ has continued to do relevant and interesting work in the decade

While I think you make valid points in general, they don't apply here for two reasons: 1) Russ has continued to do relevant and interesting work in the decade since those papers with Hinton. Here's his arXiv feed. The latest was in June 2016 I think. https://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Salakhutdinov_R/0/1/0/all/0/1 https://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Salakhutdinov_R/0/1/0/all/0/... 2) Russ will keep his position at CMU, which means that he will continue to engage in interesting work that can be shared. I'm not sure how Apple's position on open-ness is evolving, and I'm not incredibly optimistic that they'll let people share their work, but Russ will keep one foot in the open community.