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A speaker at the annual NeurIPS AI conference has drawn criticism, not for her views on artificial intelligence, but for the way she referred to a Chinese student.
during Its main presentation On “How to Improve What Matters Most,” MIT Media Lab professor Rosalind Pickard (pictured above) included a slide quoting an excuse made by “a Chinese student who has now been kicked out of a top university” for using AI, with the student supposedly saying, “No one at my school taught us morals or values.”
The slide also includes a note from Picard saying: “Most Chinese people I know are honest and morally upright.”
Google DeepMind scientist Jiao Sun Image shared by From Slide X, he writes, “Mitigating racial bias from LLMs is much easier than removing it from humans!” Yuandong Tian, a research scientist at Meta, reposted Sun Wu’s comment He added“This is outright racial bias. How can this happen in NeurIPS?
In the Q&A shots that was Also shared on XOne attendee pointed out that this was the only time anyone’s nationality had been referred to in Picard’s presentation, suggested that it was “a little offensive”, and urged her to remove the reference if she gave the presentation again – a suggestion that appeared to be offensive. Picard agrees with him.
After the talk, the organizers of NeurIPS I posted an apologywrites, “We want to address the comment made during the invited conversation this afternoon, as it is something NeurIPS does not condone and is not consistent with our Code of Conduct. We are addressing this issue with the speaker directly. NeurIPS is committed to being a place Diverse and inclusive where everyone is treated equally.
Picard also apologized statement In it, she expressed her “regret” at mentioning the student’s nationality.
“I find this was unnecessary, irrelevant to the point I was making, and created unintended negative associations,” Pickard wrote. “I apologize for doing so and am deeply sorry for the distress this incident has caused. I am learning from this experience, and welcome ideas on how to try to repair society.”
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