NeurIPS keynote speaker apologizes for reference to Chinese student

A speaker at the annual NeurIPS AI conference has drawn criticism — not for her opinions about AI, but the way she referred to a Chinese student.

During her keynote presentation on “How to optimize what matters most,” MIT Media Lab Professor Rosalind Picard (pictured above) included a slide quoting an excuse given by a “Chinese student who is now expelled from top university” for using AI, with the student supposedly saying, “Nobody at my school taught us morals or values.”

The slide also includes a note from Picard saying, “Most Chinese who I know are honest and morally upright.”

Google DeepMind scientist Jiao Sun shared a photo of the slide on X, writing, “Mitigating racial bias from LLMs is a lot easier than removing it from humans!” Yuandong Tian, a research scientist at Meta, reposted Sun’s comment and added, “This is explicit racial bias. How could this happen in NeurIPS?”

In Q&A footage that was also shared on X, an attendee noted that this was the only time anyone’s nationality was referenced in Picard’s presentation, suggested that it was “a bit offensive,” and urged her to remove the reference if she gave the presentation again — a suggestion that Picard seeming to agree with.

Following the talk, NeurIPS organizers posted an apology, writing, “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 in a statement in which she expressed “regret” for mentioning the student’s nationality.

“I see that this was unnecessary, irrelevant to the point I was making, and caused unintended negative associations,” Picard wrote. “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.”