Ian J. Goodfellow (born in 1987) is an American computer scientist, engineer, and executive. He is most known for his work on artificial neural networks and deep learning. He currently works as a research scientist at Google DeepMind. He previously worked as a research scientist at Google Brain and as the director of machine learning at Apple. He was also one of the first employees at OpenAI. He has made several important contributions to the field of deep learning, such as inventing the generative adversarial network (GAN). Goodfellow co-authored the textbook Deep Learning (2016) as the first author. He also wrote the chapter on deep learning in the authoritative textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, which is used in more than 1,500 universities in 135 countries.

Education

Goodfellow earned his BSc and MSc in computer science from Stanford University with the guidance of Andrew Ng. He received his PhD in machine learning from the Université de Montréal in February 2015, with the guidance of Yoshua Bengio and Aaron Courville. His thesis is titled "Deep learning of representations and its application to computer vision."

Career

After graduating, Goodfellow became part of the Google Brain research team at Google. In March 2016, he left Google to work at the newly created OpenAI research lab. Eleven months later, in March 2017, Goodfellow returned to Google Research but left again in 2019.

In 2019, Goodfellow joined Apple as director of machine learning in the Special Projects Group. He left Apple in April 2022 to object to Apple's plan to require employees to work in person. Shortly after, Goodfellow joined Google DeepMind as a research scientist.

Research

Ian Goodfellow is most famous for creating generative adversarial networks (GANs), which use deep learning to make images. This method uses two types of neural networks to improve image quality through competition. One network, called the "generator," creates fake images based on a set of real images, such as a group of faces. The other network, called the "discriminator," tries to decide if images are real or made by the generator. This process repeats many times. During each step, the generator and discriminator use feedback from each other to improve or check the images. Eventually, the discriminator can no longer tell the fake images apart from real ones. However, GANs have also been used to create deepfakes.

At Google, Goodfellow created a system that allows Google Maps to automatically write down addresses from photos taken by Street View cars. He also showed how machine learning systems can have weaknesses.

Recognition

In 2017, Goodfellow was recognized by MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators Under 35 list. In 2019, he was included in Foreign Policy's list of 100 Global Thinkers.