BREAKING NEWS: TECH SCIENTISTS WORLDWIDE are in shock today after the US suddenly banned Chinese participants from the world’s largest gathering of AI researchers, set to be held in Australia.
The sudden blow to academic freedom stunned the world of AI and machine learning.
d by the US is now automatically banned from submitting papers to the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, organizers said.
The submission of work is linked to attendance at the annual gathering. The science organization processes academic papers and organizes the world’s largest AI researchers’ annual meeting, due to be held in Sydney from 6 December this year.
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SCIENTISTS CRY FOUL
The organization, known as NeurIPS for short, has been running since the late 1980s, under scientific principles of collaboration—not politics.
But now organizers have been told they must reject US-sanctioned firms. The problem is that the US sanctions list is massive and arbitrary, designed to smack down rivals. It contains more than 870 Chinese targets, including Huawei, SenseTime, and Megvii. Chinese telecom operators are also listed.
Chinese scientists have cried foul. The China Computer Federation urged NeurIPS to “recognize the harm its actions have caused to the global academic community” in a statement yesterday.
It called for the foundation to “restore equal submission and academic exchange rights for all institutions”.
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'JOINT EFFORTS' CREATE SUCCESS
Last night scientist Yuliang Xiu of Westlake University in Hangzhou, China, wrote: "It’s my first time being invited as an Area Chair for NeurIPS, and I’m truly honored. However, I have to decline the role due to its sanctions policy."
He pointed out that "NeurIPS’ prosperity comes from the joint efforts of researchers worldwide, and its growth and success have long been supported by sponsorships from some of the sanctioned entities too."
Non-Chinese scientists have also expressed dismay.
“What a ridiculous decision from NeurIPS! Some of the companies affected have sponsored you for years!” said Haitham Bou Ammar, an assistant professor from Cambridge, UK, writing on X.
Maziyar Panahi, an AI healthcare scientist based in France, described the new policy as "nonsense".
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HOW SCIENCE WORKS
In the past, Chinese scientists were not just heavily involved, but actually helped make the conference happen, with Huawei, Unitree, Bytedance and Alibaba listed as sponsors.
Scientists from around the world have pointed out at that science does not work this way—global academic breakthroughs in scientific fields are, by definition, shared by humanity.
If you’ve discovered a new element in particle physics, it’s a new element. Pretending it didn’t happen just because the scientist is Chinese (or Russian or Iranian) destroys the foundations of the scientific method.
