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Apple’s director of machine learning, Ian Goodfellow, has resigned after three years, in part because of the iPhone maker’s policies to return to office work.
The leading machine learning leader left more than three years after joining Apple as part of Apple’s drive to increase its existing AI and machine learning technologies. In an email to staff, Goodfellow confirmed his departure.
Although the official reasons for leaving are unknown, Goodfellow said changing Apple’s policy to get more people to work from its offices is a problem. “I strongly believe that more flexibility would be the best policy for my team,” Goodfellow wrote in a note, according to Zoe Schiffer of The Verge.
Goodfellow joined Apple in March 2019, according to his LinkedIn account, as “Director of Machine Learning in the Special Projects Group.” The profile has not yet been updated with the exit.
Goodfellow previously worked for Google as a senior researcher. He is also known for his work on Generative Adversarial Networks, or GANs, which place two competing neural networks against each other to improve the accuracy of systems.
The controversial policy prompted Apple to set employees to work in their various offices from April 11 onwards, starting with a hybrid work schedule of one day a week in the office and gradually increasing the days in the office over time.
Not all Apple employees want to continue with the plan. A study of a small number of employees found that many of them are actively looking for work elsewhere, such as return policies, the possibility of COVID infections, toxic corporate culture and work-life balance, cited as reasons for the need to let’s move on.
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