AI rift widens as China urges boycott of top US conference over sanctions ban
Move to comply with US sanctions sparks backlash, with China’s top computing body threatening to blacklist the AI conference
Chinese computer scientists and researchers have been urged to boycott a major artificial intelligence conference after its organisers barred submissions from US-sanctioned institutions, including leading Chinese tech groups such as Huawei Technologies.
The move by the China Computer Federation (CCF) is the latest flashpoint in deepening US-China tensions over AI, a fast-evolving field with far-reaching economic, social and military implications.
The influential professional body said on Wednesday it “strongly opposed” a decision by the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) to stop accepting submissions from individuals affiliated with sanctioned entities.
“Openness, inclusiveness, equality and cooperation are the core values of academic exchange and fundamental principles recognised by the international academic community,” the CCF said. “NeurIPS’s ban on submissions from specific institutions and its politicisation of academic exchange violate these basic principles.”
Often billed as the world’s premier AI conference, NeurIPS draws tens of thousands of leading researchers each year to present cutting-edge work. It has also become a key recruitment battleground where US and Chinese tech firms compete intensely for AI talent.
At last year’s event – held across two locations for the first time, partly amid concerns that Chinese participants might face US visa hurdles – a team from Alibaba Cloud, including chief technology officer Zhou Jingren, was among four winners of the conference’s best paper award, following a similar achievement by researchers from ByteDance and Peking University a year earlier.