Apple Executive Who Left Over Return-to-Office Policy Joins Google AI Unit

People with knowledge of the matter say that an Apple executive is joining DeepMind.

Ian Goodfellow, who oversaw machine learning and artificial intelligence at Apple, left the company due to the lack of flexibility in its work policies. The company was going to start requiring corporate employees to work from the office on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. The deadline was put on hold Tuesday.

The people, who asked not to be identified because the hiring isn't yet public, said Goodfellow was a coup for the DeepMind division. Goodfellow is one of the foremost machine learning researchers, and the move is a reunion of sorts. He was a senior researcher at the company.

DeepMind didn't comment on the hire. Apple's return-to-office policy is more restrictive. The search-engine giant approves exemptions for most employees who want to work from home. Goodfellow hasn't started his new job yet.

Goodfellow was the director of machine learning at Apple. One of the most senior levels at Apple is the director level. The company has about 170,000 employees and about 1,000 directors.

Apple workers are pushing back on their return.

Goodfellow is the most senior employee to leave over the company's return-to-office policy, but more departures are expected as the rules go into effect. Apple's desire to have its employees in offices three days a week is up in the air. The rule was supposed to go into effect on May 23. On Tuesday, Apple told employees that the deadline had been delayed, but they were still expected to work two days per week.

For months, some Apple employees have complained about the return-to-office drumbeat, saying they are more productive at home and that remote work saves time and energy. Since the beginning of the Pandemic, Apple has been primarily a remote-work company.

A former Apple employee told the news agency last month that they had to go back to the office, sit in traffic for two hours and hire people to take care of kids at home because they couldn't work from home. The worker left because of the return-to-the-office push.

The policy was cited in an internal note by Goodfellow when he left Apple. GANs are generative networks created by the executive. The networks allow computers to create images or data sets with remarkable accuracy. They have been used in video games and astronomy, but most people are familiar with their use in photos or videos.

The software that conquered the game Go is from DeepMind. The lab's research has been used to improve some Google services, like YouTube bandwidth, and has recently moved more into health-care and biology applications, spinning out a new company working on drug discovery.