A speaker on the annual NeurIPS AI convention has drawn criticism — not for her opinions about AI, however the way in which she referred to a Chinese language scholar.
Throughout her keynote presentation on “The right way to optimize what issues most,” MIT Media Lab Professor Rosalind Picard (pictured above) included a slide quoting an excuse given by a “Chinese language scholar who’s now expelled from high college” for utilizing AI, with the coed supposedly saying, “No one at my college taught us morals or values.”
The slide additionally features a notice from Picard saying, “Most Chinese language who I do know are trustworthy and morally upright.”
Google DeepMind scientist Jiao Solar shared a photograph of the slide on X, writing, “Mitigating racial bias from LLMs is loads simpler than eradicating it from people!” Yuandong Tian, a analysis scientist at Meta, reposted Solar’s remark and added, “That is specific racial bias. How might this occur in NeurIPS?”
In Q&A footage that was additionally shared on X, an attendee famous that this was the one time anybody’s nationality was referenced in Picard’s presentation, advised that it was “a bit offensive,” and urged her to take away the reference if she gave the presentation once more — a suggestion that Picard seeming to agree with.
Following the discuss, NeurIPS organizers posted an apology, writing, “We wish to deal with the remark made through the invited discuss this afternoon, as it’s one thing that NeurIPS doesn’t condone and it doesn’t align with our code of conduct. We’re addressing this problem with the speaker immediately. NeurIPS is devoted to being a various and inclusive place the place everyone seems to be handled equally.”
Picard additionally apologized in an announcement wherein she expressed “remorse” for mentioning the coed’s nationality.
“I see that this was pointless, irrelevant to the purpose I used to be making, and prompted unintended unfavourable associations,” Picard wrote. “I apologize for doing this and really feel very badly concerning the misery that this incident has prompted. I’m studying from this expertise, and I welcome concepts for the right way to attempt to make amends to the neighborhood.”
