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Apple Hires AI and Deep Learning Expert Ian Goodfellow
- throwawaymath 7y agoWow. 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?
- sabertoothed 7y agoMany, to answer your question.
- throwawaymath 7y agoThat doesn't answer my question at all; why the snark?
- threwu 7y agosomeone 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.
- shamino 7y agothere's probably a correlation somewhere there. Usually if you do a big hit in the tech world, you have hard work in your DNA.
- rad_gruchalski 7y agoInteresting when taking their other recent hire into consideration: https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1122410_apple-hires-away-teslas-powertrain-chief https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1122410_apple-hires-away...
- saagarjha 7y agoOr an even more relevant recent hire: https://www.apple.com/leadership/john-giannandrea/ https://www.apple.com/leadership/john-giannandrea/
- Despegar 7y agoApple 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.
- sansnomme 7y agoEspecially with that infamous iTunes ToS
- dogma1138 7y agoIf you refer to the “not to be used to make nukes” section it’s a pretty standard clause for software exports in the US to comply with ITAR.
- Despegar 7y agoKim Jong-Un clearly didn't read it. https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/ta0lh9phcrz5w70yabrb.jpg https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/ta0lh9phcr...
- patrickserrano 7y agoInteresting that the ethernet cable is unplugged
- kpU8efre7r 7y agoI hope they do. More job openings for me since I don't mind working for a weapons contractor.
- hyperbovine 7y agoYou're going to slot in for Ian Goodfellow?
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
- williesleg 7y agoThat's great! Now that Tim Apple is finished building product, they can earn revenue by crunching my personal data! Don't believe me? Order your own copy from Apple, you'll be surprised what they keep forever.
- person_of_color 7y agoCongrats, this must be quite a sum.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- garysahota93 7y agoUntil 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?
- opportune 7y agoWhy 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?
- kinkrtyavimoodh 7y agoApple didn't become the richest company in the world by being cross-platform. That was Google's fault, and look at how EU repeatedly punishes them for trying to not be Apple.
- scarface74 7y agoThey already have a majority of people who are both willing and able to spend money. Why would they want to spend resources on people buying $50-$200 on Android phones?
- ham_sandwich 7y agoI 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?
- weaklearner 7y agoIan Goodfellow already has come up with the next great DL architecture. So its possible he will do so again. edit: thinking about your question more-as an AI person I think the business logic behind hiring AI research talent if you are FAANG is not that they are going to deliver much business value in the next five years but they may deliver astronomical returns in the next 25 years. when you have the financial strength of google hiring these people is not a very large risk. edit: I'm an ML grad student.
- chris11 7y agoI'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.
- m0zg 7y agoStill 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).
- weaklearner 7y agoeh honestly a lot AI people might give up publishing for a little while to work with/around goodfellow.
- m0zg 7y agoWhy 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.
- weaklearner 7y agoIf 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...
- m0zg 7y ago7 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.
- gubbrora 7y agoI wonder if this means that Apple's positioning as the privacy focused choice is coming to an end.
- rajacombinator 7y agoApple can’t even show my iMessages in chronological order properly. Maybe they can train a neural net to figure it out for them.