Google's former AI scientist Samy Bengio finds a new job at Apple after leaving the search engine giant over ethics concern.
Bengio, who is expected to lead a new AI research team for Apple, ended his 14-year tenure after Google made a controversial decision to remove two women researchers under his ranks.
Samy Bengio's New Role at Apple
According to Reuters' report on Tuesday, May 4, Bengio is expected to lead an AI research team under John Giannandrea.
Giannandrea, Apple's senior Vice President of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Strategy, has also worked for Google as an AI and search chief for about eight years.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - SEPTEMBER 19: Google's (former) Senior VP of Engineering John Giannandrea speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017 at Pier 48 on September 19, 2017 in San Francisco, California.
Apple declined to comment on Bengio's hiring.
The AI scientist becomes one of the many ex-Google AI experts to move to Apple after Giannandrea accepted the vice president role in December 2018.
Samy Bengio's Controversial Resignation at Google
Bengio, a reputed AI researcher who was credited for breakthroughs such as image upscaling and brain mapping, left Google after two of his researchers were reportedly fired.
In a Facebook post written in December 2020, Bengio expressed his disbelief after Google reportedly fired AI researcher and scholar Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell. Both Gebru and Mitchell are staunch supporters of workplace diversity, as well as Google's approach to reviewing research.
Bengio ultimately left the search engine giant on Apr. 6, and people familiar with the matter spilled that his decision was influenced by the firings.
"I learned so much with all of you, in terms of machine learning research of course, but also on how difficult yet important it is to organize a large team of researchers so as to promote long term ambitious research, exploration, rigor, diversity, and inclusion," he wrote in an email.
Also Read: Margaret Mitchell: Who's This Google Researcher Fired After Timnit Gebru?
Samy Bengio's Role in Advancing AI Research
Before his controversial resignation, Bengio led a group of research scientists in the Google Brain research team, where he had authored around 250 research papers about neural networks and had been pivotal in advancing studies about ethical AI.
While working for Google, Bengio helped achieve a significant breakthrough in brain mapping where their team, along with the Janelia Research Campus, published the largest high-resolution map of brain connectivity in January 2020.
Bengio was also one of the researchers behind Google's contribution in utilizing AI to fill in the details on low-resolution images in 2017.
His most recent paper on Machine Learning, which was published in February 2021, focuses on utilizing temporal-difference (TD) training loss to achieve a "superior speed accuracy profile over standard losses."
"CascadedTD is more robust to both persistent and transient noise than is a conventional ResNet; and the time-varying output trace of CascadedTD provides a signal that can be used by 'meta-cognitive' models for OOD detection and to determine when to terminate processing," the paper reads.
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Written by Leigh Mercer
