AI Rift Widens as China Urges Boycott of Top US Conference Over Sanctions Ban Chinese computer scientists and researchers have been urged to boycott a major artificial intelligence conference after its organizers barred submissions from US-sanctioned institutions, including leading Chinese tech groups such as Huawei Technologies. The China Computer Federation (CCF), the country’s top computing body, has condemned the decision by the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) to stop accepting submissions from individuals affiliated with sanctioned entities. This move has intensified tensions between the US and China over AI, a field with significant economic, social, and military implications. The CCF stated that it “strongly opposed” NeurIPS’s decision, calling it a violation of the principles of academic exchange. The organization emphasized that openness, inclusiveness, equality, and cooperation are fundamental to international academic collaboration. It argued that the conference’s actions politicized academic discourse and undermined the collaborative spirit of the research community. NeurIPS, often regarded as the world’s premier AI conference, attracts tens of thousands of researchers annually to present groundbreaking work. The event has also become a critical battleground for talent acquisition, with US and Chinese tech firms vying for top AI talent. Last year’s conference, held across two locations for the first time, faced concerns about US visa restrictions for Chinese participants. Despite these challenges, a team from Alibaba Cloud, including chief technology officer Zhou Jingren, won one of the conference’s best paper awards. This followed similar achievements by researchers from ByteDance and Peking University in previous years.#china_computer_federation #huawei_technologies #alibaba_cloud #byte_dance
