Ian Goodfellow

Ian Goodfellow is a world-renowned computer scientist known for his ground-breaking work on deep learning and artificial neural networks. The former Director of Machine Learning at Apple, he has made several notable contributions to deep learning, including the invention of the generative adversarial network, which can generate images and is often misused to create video-based disinformation and deep fakes. Representing the next generation of industry leaders in machine learning, Ian is highly sought after for speaking engagements.

Ian earned his BSc and MSc in Computer Science at Stanford University. During his studies, he served as a course assistant in machine learning and artificial intelligence and became president of the Stanford Writer’s Guild. In 2010, he completed a PhD in Machine Learning at the Universite de Montreal, supervised by the godfather of AI, Yoshua Bengio. Throughout his PhD, the accomplished computer scientist made a series of cutting-edge inventions, including multi-prediction deep-Boltzmann machines, generative adversarial networks, and a new fast inference algorithm for spike-and-slab sparse coding. Ian also led the development of Pylearn 2.

In 2013, he joined Google as a Software Engineering Intern, creating a deep neural network capable of automatically transcribing addresses from photos taken by Street View cars. He then became a Research Scientist, working on TensorFlow before being elevated to Senior Research Scientist, where he served as a member of the Google Brain team alongside co-founder Andrew Ng. In 2016, Ian became a Research Scientist at OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. He returned to Google in 2017 before joining Apple as Director of Machine Learning in 2019.

Currently serving as a Research Scientist with DeepMind, Ian is one of the most demanded experts in machine learning. He has been named in MIT Technology Reviews 35 Innovators Under 35 and included in Foreign Policy’s 100 Global Thinkers. Furthermore, Ian co-authored Deep Learning and wrote a chapter in the standard AI textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. A thought leader in computer science, Ian reveals his pioneering insights in generative models, AI, machine learning and deep learning in his speaking engagements.