Earlier this month, the news that Ian Goodfellow, the former director of Apple's machine learning, resigned because Apple refused to allow employees to continue working full-time and remotely made headlines. According to Bloomberg, goodflow Luo has now found a job at another company - deepmind under alphabet**
Deepmind is a machine learning company acquired by Google in 2014. This week, the company announced the launch of a multi-mode and multi task AI system called Gato. It's not clear what goodflower's role is in deepmind, but it's joining Apple Previously, he was a research scientist at Google. According to Bloomberg, goodflow is known as one of the most important machine learning researchers, so this may be a significant loss for apple.
In an email to Apple employees, goodflow explained that he left the company because of Apple's decision to return to the office. "I firmly believe that more flexibility would be the best policy for my team," he wrote.
It is reported that Apple began requiring employees to work in the office one day a week in April and increased to two days a week in May. Apple's goal is to allow employees to work in the office three days a week from May 23, but the plan was postponed due to the rise in covid infection in the United States. Apple employees still need to work at the campus for at least two days a week.
In addition to goodflow, some Apple employees also loudly opposed going back to work. In May, a group of employees calling themselves apple together wrote to Apple's executive team. They believed that the mixed work plan meant that they did not recognize flexible working methods and would only make employees driven by fear.