Former Google AI Scientist Has Been Hired By Apple

Samy Bengio, a former AI research scientist who worked at Google has been employed by Apple. The scientist left Google amid troubles in the AI department that cost some of the researchers their jobs.

Samy Bengio is now with Apple and will lead a new AI research team under the Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy; John Giannandrea, according to undisclosed sources. Samy Bengio isn’t the first person to leave Google and join Apple afterwards. John Giannandrea spent eight years working at Google before joining Apple in 2018.

When asked for a comment on Samy Bengio’s role, Apple refused to make a statement. Samy Bengio also did not say anything about his new role at Apple, but enthusiasts are so sure it is in the field of Artificial Intelligence research.

Bengio said he left Google where he worked for about 14 years in the search of “other exciting opportunities”. He left Google in the heat of firings. Fellow scientists Margaret Mitchell and Timnit Gebru who worked in the AI Research department were fired after Mitchell was accused of transferring electronic files out of the company and Gebru who threatened to quit after she was asked to retract a paper she published. According to Mitchell and Gebru, they were fired because they pointed their opinions about Google’s workplace diversity policies and approach to reviewing research. Samy Bengio had expressed his support for the pair who co-led a team researching ethics issues in AI at Google.

While at Google, Bengio was part of the people who led the Google Brain research team. Bengio worked to advance deep learning algorithms which are the foundations on which today’s Artificial Intelligence systems for analyzing images, speech and other data are built on.