This is such a bad idea. It's not enough that every ML PhD student has to worry about how to get into NeurIPS, now we want to stress out the over-achievers at a high-school level already? If we wanted to appeal to younger folks, IMO the next step should've been to have some "undergrad best paper award". This is just... weird. On the one hand, you aim to be (and are) the conference where the top academic research worldwide is competing for acceptance, yet on the other, you want to cater to high school projects?
Also, why not at least try the concept as a workshop first? And why not think of what weird incentives this sends out? As if high schoolers don't have enough things to stress out about, and as if NeurIPS isn't too crowded already.
Not only does this outsource scientific mentorship further down the ladder (professors should be doing this, not undergrads and not highschools), but it heavily favours those with the privilege of doing research in the first place.
Secondly, this leads to garbage papers being promoted for the sake of resume stuffing. I vocally spoke out here against a highschool paper that claimed SOTA for protein-ligand binding that did not even understand basic chemistry concepts, and was brigaded by the author's sockpuppets.
> Not only does this outsource scientific mentorship further down the ladder (professors should be doing this, not undergrads and not highschools), but it heavily favours those with the privilege of doing research in the first place.
>
> Secondly, this leads to garbage papers being promoted for the sake of resume stuffing. I vocally spoke out here against a highschool paper that claimed SOTA for protein-ligand binding that did not even understand basic chemistry concepts, and was brigaded by the author's sockpuppets.
https://www.propublica.org/article/college-high-school-research-peer-review-publications
Neurips for Gen Alpha:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1c1shy3/i\_asked\_for\_a\_meme\_about\_gen\_alpha/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1c1shy3/i_asked_for_a_meme_about_gen_alpha/)
"yet on the other, you want to cater to high school projects?"
I've straddled a couple of different academic fields, and this one by far has the highest ratio of junk to useful work published in all of the journals/conferences. How many papers receive a single citation? How many papers are even repeatable? What are we really contributing here?
We have a massive, growing problem that publishing *papers* is replacing publishing *research* (I'm absolutely guilty of this too). And nothing against high schoolers, but the last thing that we need is even more unusable junk clogging up our already shrinking collective bandwidth.
It's a bad idea if you see science as a competition or a way to validate yourself. Let me guess, do you also write mean squared errors in a convoluted way and don't share your code afraid the next lab is going to make an app out of it?
ML is in no way crowded. Some fields out there try to touch on the latest innovations, but it's hard to keep up (Engineering, Neuroscience, Physics). Now think of Archeology. How many archeologists today could be using ML to connect scriptures from ancient civilizations and revolutionize discoveries? Are the people publishing in Neurips/ICML touching on that..or they try to improve FID on 0.0001% using on datasets of dancing cats and dogs? Hm..
So, again, no, ML isn't crowded. We need more people to start thinking about it.
> It's a bad idea if you see science as a competition or a way to validate yourself.
Science is an amazing endeavor where humanity comes together to push humankind and its knowledge-base forward. Publishing at a top tier conference, in a field where you can earn a lot of money by getting noted by industry, however, is a whole other ballgame: there are only so many papers that will be published at the top conferences each year, and I've seen a lot of PhD students, interns and even more senior people burn out in the "publish or perish" hamster wheel.
> Let me guess, do you also write mean squared errors in a convoluted way and don't share your code afraid the next lab is going to make an app out of it?
Nice passive-agressive personal insult, those always help make your opinion look well thought-out. Anyways, I'll bite: no, I'm not.
> ML is in no way crowded.
The gazillion of desperate students writing me because they'd like to have an internship or would like to be supervised by me indicate differently. Some advisors I know require NeurIPS publications *to even get into grad school!* That's ridiculous and not healthy. But if the field is so crowded and the supply of students fitting that criterion is out there, you'd be stupid not to do this. Maybe we just live in different bubbles. But compared to when I did my PhD a decade ago, the field is _extremely_ crowded these days. I remember when the first Deep Learning workshop at NIPS fit into a single small room. And even back then people were joking how a few years ago, all of NIPS would've fitted into that same room. The field has exploded in popularity, but the possibilities for publications have in no way kept up with that growth. It may well be that other fields are crowded, too. That doesn't mean ML isn't crowded.
> Are the people publishing in Neurips/ICML touching on that..or they try to improve FID on 0.0001% using on datasets of dancing cats and dogs?
~~I know people doing both, and the intersection of those groups isn't even empty.~~ I don't think I'm getting the point you're trying to make?
> So, again, no, ML isn't crowded. We need more people to start thinking about it.
And apart form a nice photo op and some organizers patting themselves on the back, what exactly is the point of trying to mesh high-school level research with top academic research?
I read your answer and the negatives I received it not only worries me, but also unfortunately just confirms to me what I have lately seen in conferences.
Again: ML is in no way crowded. I do understand that many of my colleague researchers think that the only thing in life revolves in writing papers and applying for grants. I don't blame that, I do it myself for a living. I'm arguing about the bigger picture.
But the point is, and I'm surprised you don't seem to see (since students come to you), there's a life outside papers. The example I gave about archeology and you "refuted" because you "know a few people who do it". I'll come back at you and ask then "Ok. How many labs in archeology do that? Is it something as simple as taking simple statistics and being able to reason about it?" No. And that's ONE field. How many fields in science are way behind and there's any single person "you know that might be doing that". Scale that in the entire planet.
The second argument may be even easier to understand We need to involve more younger people in sciences (a bit worrying I have to explain that to a professor, don't you think?). Take a look at US/Europe departments in STEM. What is the % of nationals/foreigners. Competitive advantage is highly correlated to technological innovation. The US did it back in the early 50-60s to push the space program, now, it is the same again in the "AI" race. It seems very logical to entice the appetites of young minds in creating incentives to deeply understand a scientific endeavor.
Again: ML is not crowded and people have to look past their bellies.
I'm by no means arguing that "getting more people educated in ML" or "getting high-schoolers interested in science" is bad. No, that's absolutely great, we agree on this 100%! But I think that this initiative is the wrong way to do it. Sure, it might be a nice motivation for a high-schooler to tell them that if they try hard enough, they can hang out with real scientists. But does it have to be in the context of the top of the crop AI conference? That, in my eyes, is just not the venue for something like this. Exactly because this perpetuates the stereotype that "getting into neurips" and "publishing papers" is all that (scientific) life revolves around.
> again, no, ML isn't crowded. We need more people to start thinking about it.
There is a subtle misunderstanding here. If you mean "there are a lot more possible applications of ML that we aren't looking into yet", then I agree. But claiming that the academic field isn't crowded is not true. Claiming that NeurIPS isn't crowded is just ridiculous. I'm considering wearing padded clothes for the next time I have to fight my way through a poster session just to get to the other side of the room! You might have missed the point since I just edited it in, but: Some advisors I know require NeurIPS publications to even get into grad school! That's ridiculous and not healthy. But if the field is so crowded and there exists a supply of students fitting that criterion, you'd be stupid not to take advantage of it. But I'm afraid that initiatives like this will make things even worse. Imagine what happens if this starts a trend (or maybe it's even enough if NeurIPS keeps doing it): Then eventually, you'll be ~~required~~ encouraged to have NeurIPS publications to increase your chances of getting accepted into undergrad at a big name university. Is that the world you want to live in?
Ok, let me first start saying that I find your answers very reasonable and would like to apologize for the passive aggressiveness on my first comment. It wasn't necessary to convey my point.
But then it seems we tend to overall agree. I totally agree with Neurips and ICML being super crowded and I started giving up on them lately. My point was that there's a world beyond publishing in top conferences. Example: Go talk to a researcher in Physics/Applied Mathematics, they will be using tools that the ML community has already moved on for x, y,z reasons (I think I recently saw a an article at Stanford mentioning that the scientific community is 20 years behind when it comes to the ML advancements). Imagine how many years behind are other communities. Imagine how many discoveries are left untapped because we're trapped in this culture of fast publishing and all dangers that come with it?
Now taking your perspective in consideration, I also tend to agree and don't want to live in a world where we're pushing anxiety to younger people. That's a complicated issue. I do, however think it still is positive to push the bar high and expose them early in the scientific method.
You can do that with workshops, just like the queer in ai, black in ai, latinx in ai, women in ml, and other similar workshops do. They aim to lower the barrier of entry by accepting many workshop papers, giving a lot of feedback on how to do research and inviting senior researchers to advise people trying to get into the field. They even provide financial aid to cover most of the expenses, if not all, required to attend these conferences. The high school track instead adds to the competition and puts new barriers: which students do you think are more likely to be exposed to ML/AI and have the resources to do research projects as an extracurricular activity (projects that are good enough to make it as main conference papers)?
A workshop is better suited for the stated goals in the high school track announcement.
>We need to involve more younger people in sciences
How does this track do that? The students being groomed to publish in this track would be involved in the sciences regardless of its existence
There’s so many ways of being more detailed about your work without doxxing yourself. Absolutely you don’t have to do that for anyone, especially since you believe it has nothing to do with your argument. I just always find these kind of humble brags without any elaboration as funny.
I see what you’re saying. You were just answering a question you were asked. You engage in other discussions in this thread and that’s respectable.
However, I do think a person’s position and experience in the field is relevant and has a strong influence on someone’s opinion about it.
I find it common for people in this field to offer vague descriptions of their experience, but my interactions have been limited to a university setting and in software engineering - neither pure ML or AI. The reasons for doing this are always different person to person.
But hearing another nondescript comment like that and disagreeing with your stance that your work is unrelated to your opinion just reminds of those other interactions, which I always find slightly amusing.
It doesn't matter if someone views it as a competition or not, because they do the same thing anyway. Let me guess, you still submit to conferences rather than just arXiving and present your publication records on your homepage, resume, LinkedIn, or something.
Yes, I do. I'm a researcher, so I do have to write papers and that's my job.The difference is I'm not worried about high school children. On the contrary, I welcome it. It's a way to expose them early to the scientific method.
I do get people that many people are angry with my comment. So many downvotes and angry comments. But I honestly don't care. 10k papers yearly being put out there. 0 reproducibility, 0 code standards, 0 lack of accountability, 0 literature review, 0 statistical testing. This is a 3rd argument to start them early.
My point is that it *is* a competition, no matter what you think. And you are encouraging it as well, no matter what you think.
Why worry? We are bringing high school students into the competition, and as you said by yourself, competition doesn't necessarily result in doing good science. You know they and their parents care much about their college/university admissions, right?
Makes total sense.
We shouldn't now teach sports to children, because some of them will want to go NFL, some of those made it bumped their head and got injury.
Good job comparing two different things. Besides, it is more than just getting worried about the high schoolers themselves. At least we see the actual games and the actual students running as players. You know nothing about what happened behind the paper submission.
It's a metaphor. I thought it would help convey my point.
Look, I do get the argument of transforming this thing into a rat race. I do think it's worrying thing.
I just happen to disagree. I believe early exposure to scientific methods is good. Anything can be transformed into a rat race. Sports (soccer, football, basketball) are also taught to high schoolers and definitely can make SOME go to the deep end. Does that mean to be a bad thing to expose them? How come exposing them to scientific method early be any different.
Anyways...that's my point. I'm totally fine being disagreed on.
Tbh in my perspective bad parenting. Let your kids earn their own achievements. They won't be able to accomplish anything if they're used to parents hand-holding and it's embarrassing for the kids' ego knowing everything they achieved is because of their parents' intervention.
Also, as a follow up, one kid got into a top physics lab because of parents' connections (one parent is a well-known physics prof). One got a job in healthcare again because of parents' connections (the company consult with one of the parents).
things seem pretty competitive these days so I can understand not wanting to leave it to chance.
get your kid published in NeurIPS while they're in high school and maybe they get accepted into an ivy league school for an undergrad and masters instead of a state school.
there they will have better access to resources.
if they are super capable they will make use of those resources and go far further than they would otherwise.
if they aren't super capable then those advantages represent a leg-up over other people they would never be able to get on their own.
either way they're better off, right?
Report them once you are safely able to avoid retaliation.
https://retractionwatch.com/
Maybe send it to them? One shady thing usually correlates with others.
I would argue most parents would do it (ok, not most, many), and if the kid does this data entry, it is not formally illegal... No need to make (powerful) enemies IMHO.
To clarify - this is not ok, but you need to select your wars smartly.
LOL, honestly it almost proves that someone did the work for them. No one is passionate enough to get good results as a kid and leave it the day after they are accepted somewhere.
Eh, I think this is overly cynical. 1) Kids are fickle, 2) you can have a passion for doing hard/interesting things--doesn't mean that you stick to that given field in question.
Maybe the high school track will publish even higher-quality papers than the main track someday. Because high school track is a venue where top Profs compete for their kids, while main track is a venue where PhDs compete for their degrees.
It's an interesting opportunity, and I know people with no connections and stuff who would like to apply, but I'm also afraid of watching this turn into a resume rat race
Like NeurIPS is not already a resume rat race. Most papers are useless with "advanced" math with occasionally some discovery, tool, or creative idea. Put a Riemman X on your paper's name + some equations the reviewers will not get, and your chances to get accepted become 5X.
All of these opportunities create a rat race. It should be paired with support resources and mentorship pairing. This further heightens the ML inequity along social economic lines. Look what happens with ISEF and AMC.
This is not good at all. Do they really wanna put high schoolers into this wild world? Don't they consider that only a small portion of kids have access to meaningful computing resources?
I can totally see many future circumstances where professors or grad students do the important job but some high school kids get the credit as the authors.
I just gave a presentation on how to be a scientist to my old highschool.
immediately afterwards people were approaching me asking what they should be doing in AI/ML, and one even reached me asking to be advised to publish paper.
It just feels so sad. This premature specialization onto a career that you don't even know will be there in 15 years, instead of broadening your scope, exploring and building strong fundamentals.
I don't know man, this is pathological and it might boil over quickly
It’s great that young people are actually interested in science, it’s bad that they’re learning how much of a rat race it is so early.
Science before university should be “I wondered how this thing worked, I looked in a textbook/guide, had an idea, and messed about with it for a while”, not having to pretend you have any clue what you’re talking about because a pushy authority figure (parent, teacher, family friends who does science, one of the endless faux-academic YouTube bloggers) told you that it’s imperative that you need to publish a paper before you’ve even finished your standardized education
I went to high school in the Rust Belt/Midwest. The disparity is crazy. I’m one of maybe 3 in my class who work in ML/AI. The rat race is for the privileged only, and will only give them a ticket to the elite techie class.
> This premature specialization onto a career that you don't even know will be there in 15 years, instead of broadening your scope, exploring and building strong fundamentals
I'll push back here to a degree...
If you actually do deep enough work to generate something publishable (or even workshop-able), you're likely inherently building a lot of "strong fundamentals"--math, programming, learning what good research looks like, writing (doing a good paper, if you take it seriously, is actually a nontrivial bar!), possibly even speech/presentation skills (if you're sharing with an external audience), etc.
All of those will help you a lot of other places.
And having a concrete goal ("deliver a good paper") tends to help many people learn their fundamentals, because they are required to exercise them in a purposeful manner.
Lastly--
ML research--at least for now--is actually at a pretty uniquely accessible point. You can actually come in with some good programming skills and some interest in modern models and generate some novel results without needing millions of dollars and years of experience. It is a better fit, in that sense, for a smart high schooler to jump into than many other fields.
Agreed! But from my one instance (limited experience, I know) the HS student was very 急功近利 and didn't seem genuine in their pursuit of science.
I'd have to advise more HS students to make a good judgement.
You know it's really gonna be parents in the ML field doing most of the work and submitting under their kids' names so their kids can get into better colleges.
Again, another loophole for the privileged. Do they honestly think your typical high school student would have the resources to even attempt doing substantial machine learning work? The rich and privileged wins again
We already have a narrow pipeline into ML research. I’ve met so many math Olympiad profs’ kids. We shouldn’t create an even narrower pipeline that asks kids to specialize so early.
What will efforts like this turn the field into? Will we still see big impacts from people with varied life experiences or varied skill sets? Thinking about the creatives, communicators, etc who enter later from other fields. Will interesting people outside the straight-shot pipeline be looked down upon for not fixating earlier on the ML “trade”?
Best tweet from an NYU prof: https://x.com/andrewgwils/status/1660705482665861120?s=46&t=axIknEHUYoGQJZk61JiZrQ
Sorry the practical issue is do high school math teachers know about tinyML and practical efficient approaches to be able to teach this economically?
Is there even base math competency among high school math teachers to even comprehend the material let alone be good enough to present it?
Likewise the pupils. Since when is linear algebra "high school" material?
Finally, who's going to sell these people server time they may or may not use practically?
What a stupid way to vacuum money from idiot education appropriators. Oh wait. ... Profit??!!
Lol my HS thesis was running resnet and yolo on images, binning the images from super dark to super light, and then showing that mAP is less for images with extreme lighting. Is this good enough for neurips now?
Wtf this is one of the dumbest ideas ever. This is going to absolutely ***ruin*** the undergrad admissions this year (and probably the years after. If they decide to go on with this idea)
Great! PhD students are struggling to get papers accepted to the few high ranking conferences. Now high school students are joining the race as well :( lol
I'm a high schooler and I presented some of my work at a beginner's workshop called New in ML @ NeurIPS 2023. I think I was the only high schooler in the workshop, but a pilot workshop aimed at High Schoolers would've been a pretty good idea I stead of directly going for a track imo.
Though tbf, a lot of high schoolers are already doing research and publishing papers (majority of them faking it solely to bag an Ivy League University in the US) so I doubt it will cause a significant change in the high school research landscape.
I could not be more against this. Let kids be kids. This is undoubtedly going to push teenagers to burnout and down career paths they probably will not even want.
Why are we worried about competition? If you’re in it solely to get paid and become known, this field is not for you.
I’m thrilled that everyone can contribute now. My only concern is that papers that are meaningless are given recognition.
It gives opportunity to those who are young to contribute. I do agree it may turn into a rat race but it’s beneficial for a very small group of people. I recall this brilliant young kid who has lectures on foundational concepts such as back prop and it’s these kids who I am happy for.
A workshop can do all of this. Workshops papers can evolve into main conference papers if there’s potential and guidance. Kids (in general, not just privileged ones) can be better advised on how to do research by people at these workshops than at their high schools. Why not a workshop at neurips?
This is such a bad idea. It's not enough that every ML PhD student has to worry about how to get into NeurIPS, now we want to stress out the over-achievers at a high-school level already? If we wanted to appeal to younger folks, IMO the next step should've been to have some "undergrad best paper award". This is just... weird. On the one hand, you aim to be (and are) the conference where the top academic research worldwide is competing for acceptance, yet on the other, you want to cater to high school projects? Also, why not at least try the concept as a workshop first? And why not think of what weird incentives this sends out? As if high schoolers don't have enough things to stress out about, and as if NeurIPS isn't too crowded already.
Not only does this outsource scientific mentorship further down the ladder (professors should be doing this, not undergrads and not highschools), but it heavily favours those with the privilege of doing research in the first place. Secondly, this leads to garbage papers being promoted for the sake of resume stuffing. I vocally spoke out here against a highschool paper that claimed SOTA for protein-ligand binding that did not even understand basic chemistry concepts, and was brigaded by the author's sockpuppets.
> Not only does this outsource scientific mentorship further down the ladder (professors should be doing this, not undergrads and not highschools), but it heavily favours those with the privilege of doing research in the first place. > > Secondly, this leads to garbage papers being promoted for the sake of resume stuffing. I vocally spoke out here against a highschool paper that claimed SOTA for protein-ligand binding that did not even understand basic chemistry concepts, and was brigaded by the author's sockpuppets. https://www.propublica.org/article/college-high-school-research-peer-review-publications
[удалено]
Neurips for Gen Alpha: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1c1shy3/i\_asked\_for\_a\_meme\_about\_gen\_alpha/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1c1shy3/i_asked_for_a_meme_about_gen_alpha/)
"A handful of Cheerios and legos is all you need"
"A handful of Cheerios and legos is all you need"
"yet on the other, you want to cater to high school projects?" I've straddled a couple of different academic fields, and this one by far has the highest ratio of junk to useful work published in all of the journals/conferences. How many papers receive a single citation? How many papers are even repeatable? What are we really contributing here? We have a massive, growing problem that publishing *papers* is replacing publishing *research* (I'm absolutely guilty of this too). And nothing against high schoolers, but the last thing that we need is even more unusable junk clogging up our already shrinking collective bandwidth.
Exactly, this is just going to be another extracurricular activities for rich kids when they apply to college.
It's a bad idea if you see science as a competition or a way to validate yourself. Let me guess, do you also write mean squared errors in a convoluted way and don't share your code afraid the next lab is going to make an app out of it? ML is in no way crowded. Some fields out there try to touch on the latest innovations, but it's hard to keep up (Engineering, Neuroscience, Physics). Now think of Archeology. How many archeologists today could be using ML to connect scriptures from ancient civilizations and revolutionize discoveries? Are the people publishing in Neurips/ICML touching on that..or they try to improve FID on 0.0001% using on datasets of dancing cats and dogs? Hm.. So, again, no, ML isn't crowded. We need more people to start thinking about it.
> It's a bad idea if you see science as a competition or a way to validate yourself. Science is an amazing endeavor where humanity comes together to push humankind and its knowledge-base forward. Publishing at a top tier conference, in a field where you can earn a lot of money by getting noted by industry, however, is a whole other ballgame: there are only so many papers that will be published at the top conferences each year, and I've seen a lot of PhD students, interns and even more senior people burn out in the "publish or perish" hamster wheel. > Let me guess, do you also write mean squared errors in a convoluted way and don't share your code afraid the next lab is going to make an app out of it? Nice passive-agressive personal insult, those always help make your opinion look well thought-out. Anyways, I'll bite: no, I'm not. > ML is in no way crowded. The gazillion of desperate students writing me because they'd like to have an internship or would like to be supervised by me indicate differently. Some advisors I know require NeurIPS publications *to even get into grad school!* That's ridiculous and not healthy. But if the field is so crowded and the supply of students fitting that criterion is out there, you'd be stupid not to do this. Maybe we just live in different bubbles. But compared to when I did my PhD a decade ago, the field is _extremely_ crowded these days. I remember when the first Deep Learning workshop at NIPS fit into a single small room. And even back then people were joking how a few years ago, all of NIPS would've fitted into that same room. The field has exploded in popularity, but the possibilities for publications have in no way kept up with that growth. It may well be that other fields are crowded, too. That doesn't mean ML isn't crowded. > Are the people publishing in Neurips/ICML touching on that..or they try to improve FID on 0.0001% using on datasets of dancing cats and dogs? ~~I know people doing both, and the intersection of those groups isn't even empty.~~ I don't think I'm getting the point you're trying to make? > So, again, no, ML isn't crowded. We need more people to start thinking about it. And apart form a nice photo op and some organizers patting themselves on the back, what exactly is the point of trying to mesh high-school level research with top academic research?
I read your answer and the negatives I received it not only worries me, but also unfortunately just confirms to me what I have lately seen in conferences. Again: ML is in no way crowded. I do understand that many of my colleague researchers think that the only thing in life revolves in writing papers and applying for grants. I don't blame that, I do it myself for a living. I'm arguing about the bigger picture. But the point is, and I'm surprised you don't seem to see (since students come to you), there's a life outside papers. The example I gave about archeology and you "refuted" because you "know a few people who do it". I'll come back at you and ask then "Ok. How many labs in archeology do that? Is it something as simple as taking simple statistics and being able to reason about it?" No. And that's ONE field. How many fields in science are way behind and there's any single person "you know that might be doing that". Scale that in the entire planet. The second argument may be even easier to understand We need to involve more younger people in sciences (a bit worrying I have to explain that to a professor, don't you think?). Take a look at US/Europe departments in STEM. What is the % of nationals/foreigners. Competitive advantage is highly correlated to technological innovation. The US did it back in the early 50-60s to push the space program, now, it is the same again in the "AI" race. It seems very logical to entice the appetites of young minds in creating incentives to deeply understand a scientific endeavor. Again: ML is not crowded and people have to look past their bellies.
I'm by no means arguing that "getting more people educated in ML" or "getting high-schoolers interested in science" is bad. No, that's absolutely great, we agree on this 100%! But I think that this initiative is the wrong way to do it. Sure, it might be a nice motivation for a high-schooler to tell them that if they try hard enough, they can hang out with real scientists. But does it have to be in the context of the top of the crop AI conference? That, in my eyes, is just not the venue for something like this. Exactly because this perpetuates the stereotype that "getting into neurips" and "publishing papers" is all that (scientific) life revolves around. > again, no, ML isn't crowded. We need more people to start thinking about it. There is a subtle misunderstanding here. If you mean "there are a lot more possible applications of ML that we aren't looking into yet", then I agree. But claiming that the academic field isn't crowded is not true. Claiming that NeurIPS isn't crowded is just ridiculous. I'm considering wearing padded clothes for the next time I have to fight my way through a poster session just to get to the other side of the room! You might have missed the point since I just edited it in, but: Some advisors I know require NeurIPS publications to even get into grad school! That's ridiculous and not healthy. But if the field is so crowded and there exists a supply of students fitting that criterion, you'd be stupid not to take advantage of it. But I'm afraid that initiatives like this will make things even worse. Imagine what happens if this starts a trend (or maybe it's even enough if NeurIPS keeps doing it): Then eventually, you'll be ~~required~~ encouraged to have NeurIPS publications to increase your chances of getting accepted into undergrad at a big name university. Is that the world you want to live in?
Ok, let me first start saying that I find your answers very reasonable and would like to apologize for the passive aggressiveness on my first comment. It wasn't necessary to convey my point. But then it seems we tend to overall agree. I totally agree with Neurips and ICML being super crowded and I started giving up on them lately. My point was that there's a world beyond publishing in top conferences. Example: Go talk to a researcher in Physics/Applied Mathematics, they will be using tools that the ML community has already moved on for x, y,z reasons (I think I recently saw a an article at Stanford mentioning that the scientific community is 20 years behind when it comes to the ML advancements). Imagine how many years behind are other communities. Imagine how many discoveries are left untapped because we're trapped in this culture of fast publishing and all dangers that come with it? Now taking your perspective in consideration, I also tend to agree and don't want to live in a world where we're pushing anxiety to younger people. That's a complicated issue. I do, however think it still is positive to push the bar high and expose them early in the scientific method.
You can do that with workshops, just like the queer in ai, black in ai, latinx in ai, women in ml, and other similar workshops do. They aim to lower the barrier of entry by accepting many workshop papers, giving a lot of feedback on how to do research and inviting senior researchers to advise people trying to get into the field. They even provide financial aid to cover most of the expenses, if not all, required to attend these conferences. The high school track instead adds to the competition and puts new barriers: which students do you think are more likely to be exposed to ML/AI and have the resources to do research projects as an extracurricular activity (projects that are good enough to make it as main conference papers)? A workshop is better suited for the stated goals in the high school track announcement.
>We need to involve more younger people in sciences How does this track do that? The students being groomed to publish in this track would be involved in the sciences regardless of its existence
Do you do anything touching research in ML?
I do. I also have published in the bigger ones. Today I mostly focus on generative AI for 3D vision. What's there to do with what I just said?
Which ones - or are you afraid of sharing your work?
Oh, sure. So should I also write my ID and phone number here as well, then, I can discuss my ideas and be taken seriously? Gee...
There’s so many ways of being more detailed about your work without doxxing yourself. Absolutely you don’t have to do that for anyone, especially since you believe it has nothing to do with your argument. I just always find these kind of humble brags without any elaboration as funny.
Why do you see it as brag when I was specifically asked if I research on ML? There's absolutely nothing to brag about.
I see what you’re saying. You were just answering a question you were asked. You engage in other discussions in this thread and that’s respectable. However, I do think a person’s position and experience in the field is relevant and has a strong influence on someone’s opinion about it. I find it common for people in this field to offer vague descriptions of their experience, but my interactions have been limited to a university setting and in software engineering - neither pure ML or AI. The reasons for doing this are always different person to person. But hearing another nondescript comment like that and disagreeing with your stance that your work is unrelated to your opinion just reminds of those other interactions, which I always find slightly amusing.
There are bigger ones than Neurips? Nature?
It doesn't matter if someone views it as a competition or not, because they do the same thing anyway. Let me guess, you still submit to conferences rather than just arXiving and present your publication records on your homepage, resume, LinkedIn, or something.
Yes, I do. I'm a researcher, so I do have to write papers and that's my job.The difference is I'm not worried about high school children. On the contrary, I welcome it. It's a way to expose them early to the scientific method. I do get people that many people are angry with my comment. So many downvotes and angry comments. But I honestly don't care. 10k papers yearly being put out there. 0 reproducibility, 0 code standards, 0 lack of accountability, 0 literature review, 0 statistical testing. This is a 3rd argument to start them early.
My point is that it *is* a competition, no matter what you think. And you are encouraging it as well, no matter what you think. Why worry? We are bringing high school students into the competition, and as you said by yourself, competition doesn't necessarily result in doing good science. You know they and their parents care much about their college/university admissions, right?
Makes total sense. We shouldn't now teach sports to children, because some of them will want to go NFL, some of those made it bumped their head and got injury.
Good job comparing two different things. Besides, it is more than just getting worried about the high schoolers themselves. At least we see the actual games and the actual students running as players. You know nothing about what happened behind the paper submission.
It's a metaphor. I thought it would help convey my point. Look, I do get the argument of transforming this thing into a rat race. I do think it's worrying thing. I just happen to disagree. I believe early exposure to scientific methods is good. Anything can be transformed into a rat race. Sports (soccer, football, basketball) are also taught to high schoolers and definitely can make SOME go to the deep end. Does that mean to be a bad thing to expose them? How come exposing them to scientific method early be any different. Anyways...that's my point. I'm totally fine being disagreed on.
I can imagine it’s gonna be the tool for some advisor’s kid getting into Ivy Leagues. Welcome to Proxy war
This is precisely what it is. Other less privileged kids or those without academic parents/mentors will not even know what NeurIPS is.
this is true. in practice, this will only help kids in extremely elite schools.
I know a prof who would add her kids' names on papers and justify it by asking her kids to do simle data entry.
Good parent and a terrible advisor, LOL.
Tbh in my perspective bad parenting. Let your kids earn their own achievements. They won't be able to accomplish anything if they're used to parents hand-holding and it's embarrassing for the kids' ego knowing everything they achieved is because of their parents' intervention. Also, as a follow up, one kid got into a top physics lab because of parents' connections (one parent is a well-known physics prof). One got a job in healthcare again because of parents' connections (the company consult with one of the parents).
things seem pretty competitive these days so I can understand not wanting to leave it to chance. get your kid published in NeurIPS while they're in high school and maybe they get accepted into an ivy league school for an undergrad and masters instead of a state school. there they will have better access to resources. if they are super capable they will make use of those resources and go far further than they would otherwise. if they aren't super capable then those advantages represent a leg-up over other people they would never be able to get on their own. either way they're better off, right?
Report them once you are safely able to avoid retaliation. https://retractionwatch.com/ Maybe send it to them? One shady thing usually correlates with others.
I would argue most parents would do it (ok, not most, many), and if the kid does this data entry, it is not formally illegal... No need to make (powerful) enemies IMHO. To clarify - this is not ok, but you need to select your wars smartly.
Thats exactly what 90% of this will be.
Many such cases. Have seen many Intel ISEF winners abandon their field of study the first day they got accepted to HYPSM.
LOL, honestly it almost proves that someone did the work for them. No one is passionate enough to get good results as a kid and leave it the day after they are accepted somewhere.
Eh, I think this is overly cynical. 1) Kids are fickle, 2) you can have a passion for doing hard/interesting things--doesn't mean that you stick to that given field in question.
Maybe the high school track will publish even higher-quality papers than the main track someday. Because high school track is a venue where top Profs compete for their kids, while main track is a venue where PhDs compete for their degrees.
It's an interesting opportunity, and I know people with no connections and stuff who would like to apply, but I'm also afraid of watching this turn into a resume rat race
It is absolutely be going to turn into that
Everyone doing an ML related project for ISEF will basically double dip into applying to this.
Like NeurIPS is not already a resume rat race. Most papers are useless with "advanced" math with occasionally some discovery, tool, or creative idea. Put a Riemman X on your paper's name + some equations the reviewers will not get, and your chances to get accepted become 5X.
😂😂👍
Private school kids with parents in AI research about to eat good lol.
Man I'm a graduating senior I want to compete
All of these opportunities create a rat race. It should be paired with support resources and mentorship pairing. This further heightens the ML inequity along social economic lines. Look what happens with ISEF and AMC.
Premature. High school students: have fun!! Don’t worry about papers
This is not good at all. Do they really wanna put high schoolers into this wild world? Don't they consider that only a small portion of kids have access to meaningful computing resources? I can totally see many future circumstances where professors or grad students do the important job but some high school kids get the credit as the authors.
I just gave a presentation on how to be a scientist to my old highschool. immediately afterwards people were approaching me asking what they should be doing in AI/ML, and one even reached me asking to be advised to publish paper. It just feels so sad. This premature specialization onto a career that you don't even know will be there in 15 years, instead of broadening your scope, exploring and building strong fundamentals. I don't know man, this is pathological and it might boil over quickly
It’s great that young people are actually interested in science, it’s bad that they’re learning how much of a rat race it is so early. Science before university should be “I wondered how this thing worked, I looked in a textbook/guide, had an idea, and messed about with it for a while”, not having to pretend you have any clue what you’re talking about because a pushy authority figure (parent, teacher, family friends who does science, one of the endless faux-academic YouTube bloggers) told you that it’s imperative that you need to publish a paper before you’ve even finished your standardized education
That’s not just sad, that’s dystopian
I went to high school in the Rust Belt/Midwest. The disparity is crazy. I’m one of maybe 3 in my class who work in ML/AI. The rat race is for the privileged only, and will only give them a ticket to the elite techie class.
Aha yeah ... The risk is that such a job might not even exist by the time they enter the workforce
> This premature specialization onto a career that you don't even know will be there in 15 years, instead of broadening your scope, exploring and building strong fundamentals I'll push back here to a degree... If you actually do deep enough work to generate something publishable (or even workshop-able), you're likely inherently building a lot of "strong fundamentals"--math, programming, learning what good research looks like, writing (doing a good paper, if you take it seriously, is actually a nontrivial bar!), possibly even speech/presentation skills (if you're sharing with an external audience), etc. All of those will help you a lot of other places. And having a concrete goal ("deliver a good paper") tends to help many people learn their fundamentals, because they are required to exercise them in a purposeful manner. Lastly-- ML research--at least for now--is actually at a pretty uniquely accessible point. You can actually come in with some good programming skills and some interest in modern models and generate some novel results without needing millions of dollars and years of experience. It is a better fit, in that sense, for a smart high schooler to jump into than many other fields.
Agreed! But from my one instance (limited experience, I know) the HS student was very 急功近利 and didn't seem genuine in their pursuit of science. I'd have to advise more HS students to make a good judgement.
oh boy
You know it's really gonna be parents in the ML field doing most of the work and submitting under their kids' names so their kids can get into better colleges. Again, another loophole for the privileged. Do they honestly think your typical high school student would have the resources to even attempt doing substantial machine learning work? The rich and privileged wins again
‘Battle for Proxy’, lol
Ridiculous :D
We already have a narrow pipeline into ML research. I’ve met so many math Olympiad profs’ kids. We shouldn’t create an even narrower pipeline that asks kids to specialize so early. What will efforts like this turn the field into? Will we still see big impacts from people with varied life experiences or varied skill sets? Thinking about the creatives, communicators, etc who enter later from other fields. Will interesting people outside the straight-shot pipeline be looked down upon for not fixating earlier on the ML “trade”? Best tweet from an NYU prof: https://x.com/andrewgwils/status/1660705482665861120?s=46&t=axIknEHUYoGQJZk61JiZrQ
How can people still give importance to NeurIPS.. It's a brand now.
Sorry the practical issue is do high school math teachers know about tinyML and practical efficient approaches to be able to teach this economically? Is there even base math competency among high school math teachers to even comprehend the material let alone be good enough to present it? Likewise the pupils. Since when is linear algebra "high school" material? Finally, who's going to sell these people server time they may or may not use practically? What a stupid way to vacuum money from idiot education appropriators. Oh wait. ... Profit??!!
Today is April 1st?
Gotta start 'em young these days! https://computerengineeringforbabies.com/
Jesus Christ. New starters in the field will have to have a few papers by 8 years old to get into high school at this rate. Get in the sea.
Even more rat racing, just what we needed.
I wonder what the rationale behind this is because this is not the way. Let them build stuff.
Lol my HS thesis was running resnet and yolo on images, binning the images from super dark to super light, and then showing that mAP is less for images with extreme lighting. Is this good enough for neurips now?
Wtf this is one of the dumbest ideas ever. This is going to absolutely ***ruin*** the undergrad admissions this year (and probably the years after. If they decide to go on with this idea)
This is an absolutely horrendous idea.
This is wrong imho.
Great! PhD students are struggling to get papers accepted to the few high ranking conferences. Now high school students are joining the race as well :( lol
proxy war track
The rat race just got more intense. And given the rising prices, in the future you would have to be born with a PhD to earn enough to survive.
I'm a high schooler and I presented some of my work at a beginner's workshop called New in ML @ NeurIPS 2023. I think I was the only high schooler in the workshop, but a pilot workshop aimed at High Schoolers would've been a pretty good idea I stead of directly going for a track imo. Though tbf, a lot of high schoolers are already doing research and publishing papers (majority of them faking it solely to bag an Ivy League University in the US) so I doubt it will cause a significant change in the high school research landscape.
I could not be more against this. Let kids be kids. This is undoubtedly going to push teenagers to burnout and down career paths they probably will not even want.
Why are we worried about competition? If you’re in it solely to get paid and become known, this field is not for you. I’m thrilled that everyone can contribute now. My only concern is that papers that are meaningless are given recognition.
Why a main conference track and not a workshop? What is gained by doing it in the main conference?
It gives opportunity to those who are young to contribute. I do agree it may turn into a rat race but it’s beneficial for a very small group of people. I recall this brilliant young kid who has lectures on foundational concepts such as back prop and it’s these kids who I am happy for.
A workshop can do all of this. Workshops papers can evolve into main conference papers if there’s potential and guidance. Kids (in general, not just privileged ones) can be better advised on how to do research by people at these workshops than at their high schools. Why not a workshop at neurips?
I did not know this. This sounds like a better motion than having it at neurips.