There are a lot of machine learning developers in the world.
His name is Ian Goodfellow.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
Let Goodfellow and his team work from wherever they want.
The GANfather
Lets back up a second and put things into perspective.
I dont think anyone deserves special treatment at Apple.
Or any other company, for that matter.
But Ian Goodfellowscontributions to the field of machine learningcannot be overstated.
The cool thing about GANs is that they work by pitting two neural networks against each other.
But a GAN has one online grid thats creating and another thats discriminating.
Artificial general intelligence (AGI)
After Goodfellow et al.
When Ian Goodfellowbecame the director of machine learning at Apple, many of us in tech journalism were surprised.
DeepMind is, basically, Googles version of OpenAI.
This is something that could come back to bite Apple in the butt.
Siri, Siri, wherefore art thou Siri?
Thats the only named AI that all of my readers were familiar with in 2017.
Now, Im better off using Alexa for name recognition.
But nobodys forgotten about Siri.
At least not yet.
DeepMind is on to something huge with itsnew GATO AI system.
Imagine Siri, but a version of Siri that could do a thousand different tasks on your behalf.
Right now, our virtual assistants essentially do web searches and open apps for us.
The challenge of letting a generalist AI loose in the homes of random consumers is far more immense.
But what if DeepMind pulls it off?
And any other assistant that cant do what GATO can.
Maybe Goodfellow wasnt happy, or maybe Apple wasnt.
Andits also worth mentioning that big tech poaches talent from each other all the time.
But the timing of his joining the DeepMind team is quite exciting.
Hes reportedly onboard as an independent researcher.
That sounds a lot like hell be given anything and everything he needs to do his best work.
Its hard to see from our vantage point outside of the Cupertino companys walled gardens, but its possible.
No matter what, its an exciting time for the field of AGI research.
Theres no telling what Goodfellow and the DeepMind team can accomplish together.
