A speaker at the annual NeurIPS AI conference has faced backlash, not for her views on AI, but for her reference to a Chinese student.
During her keynote on "How to Optimize What Matters Most," MIT Media Lab Professor Rosalind Picard included a slide quoting an excuse from a "Chinese student who is now expelled from a top university" for using AI, claiming, "Nobody at my school taught us morals or values." The slide also featured Picard's note stating, "Most Chinese who I know are honest and morally upright."
Google DeepMind scientist Jiao Sun shared a photo of the slide on X, commenting, "Mitigating racial bias from LLMs is a lot easier than removing it from humans!" Yuandong Tian, a research scientist at Meta, echoed Sun's sentiment, calling it "explicit racial bias" and questioning how this could occur at NeurIPS.
In a Q&A session shared on X, an attendee pointed out that this was the only mention of nationality in Picard's talk, describing it as "a bit offensive" and recommending she remove the reference in future presentations—an idea Picard appeared to agree with.
Afterward, NeurIPS organizers issued an apology, stating, "We want to address the comment made during the invited talk this afternoon, as it is something that NeurIPS does not condone and it doesn't align with our code of conduct. We are addressing this issue with the speaker directly. NeurIPS is dedicated to being a diverse and inclusive place where everyone is treated equally."
Picard also apologized, expressing "regret" for mentioning the student's nationality. She acknowledged that it was unnecessary, irrelevant to her point, and caused unintended negative associations. "I apologize for doing this and feel very badly about the distress that this incident has caused. I am learning from this experience, and I welcome ideas for how to try to make amends to the community," she stated.
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