NeurIPS reverses policy on submissions from US-sanctioned entities

In short: NeurIPS briefly tightened rules on who could submit research papers due to U.S. sanctions, then quickly reversed the change after strong criticism in China.

What happened

The Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, known as NeurIPS, posted a new policy earlier this week about paper submissions. NeurIPS is run by a California-based foundation, and it said it had to follow U.S. law.

The new policy said NeurIPS would restrict submissions from organizations connected to U.S. sanctions, based on a U.S. Treasury list called the Specially Designated Nationals list, or SDN (a government “do not do business with” list). The announcement was seen as affecting major Chinese companies that are on U.S. sanctions lists, including Huawei, SenseTime, Megvii, Hikvision, and SMIC.

The policy drew fast backlash in China. Two major groups, the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) and the China Computer Federation (CCF), publicly opposed it. CAST said it would stop taking funding requests from members who wanted to attend NeurIPS and would steer them to conferences in China or to international events it viewed as more welcoming.

Within hours of these boycott calls, NeurIPS reversed course. It said the broader restrictions were posted by mistake due to a miscommunication with its legal team. NeurIPS updated the policy to say restrictions apply only to submissions from entities on the SDN list, and it apologized for the confusion.

Why it matters

NeurIPS is one of the main places where AI researchers share new work, like a big annual science fair for the field. When rules about who can participate change suddenly, it can limit collaboration and increase distrust, especially as the U.S. and China compete more strongly in AI.

Source: Wired