Prof. Rosalind Picard apologizes for comments at the 2024 NeurIPS conference
Picard: “Our students and colleagues who are Chinese or Chinese American frequently contend with deliberate ethnic stereotyping that feeds an atmosphere of mistrust.”
On Dec. 13, 2024, MIT Media Lab Prof. Rosalind Picard ScD ’91 MS ’86 gave a keynote presentation at the NeurIPS Conference that sparked controversy for her comments regarding the story of a Chinese student. Picard is the founder and director of the MIT Media Lab’s Affective Computing Research Group, which focuses on “bringing together Emotion AI and other affective technologies” to improve human wellbeing.
Titled “How to optimize what matters most,” the keynote presentation had a slide with a quote from a Chinese student who was allegedly expelled from a top university for using AI. The student allegedly said, “Nobody at my school taught us morals or values.” Picard included a note on the bottom of the slide saying, “Most Chinese who I know are honest and morally upright.”
In a Q&A session, an attendee asked Picard to clarify the reason that she included the student’s Chinese nationality in the example, given that other examples in the presentation did not mention nationality. Picard replied, stating that the student’s quote was a reflection that the “school was not teaching it [morals], which meant that it applied to a lot of people there.” The attendee responded to Picard, requesting that she remove the note about nationality in the future because of its “unconscious bias.”
Picard’s slide and video was shared on X and other social media sites, drawing criticism from the Chinese and Chinese American community. “This choice perpetuates harmful stereotypes about Chinese scholars and reflects a broader bias against Asians,” University of Maryland Computer Science Professor Furong Huang said in a post on X. Other posts echoed Huang’s sentiments, criticizing Picard for racial bias and stereotyping.
After the talk, NeurIPS posted an apology on X, stating that the comments Picard made did not adhere to NeurIPS’s values of diversity, inclusion, and equality. On Dec. 14, Picard issued an apology for stating the student’s nationality in her presentation. “I see that this was unnecessary, irrelevant to the point I was making, and caused unintended negative associations,” Picard said.
On Dec. 16, the MIT Graduate Student Union (GSU) and MIT Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) published an open letter requesting Picard to revise her apology. “Her statement falls short of fully acknowledging the negative impacts her comment has had on the academic community and on perceptions of Chinese individuals,” the letter stated.
In addition, the letter called on President Kornbluth to issue a statement affirming MIT’s continued support of Chinese community members and recognizing the negative impact of Picard’s remarks on the “Chinese members of the MIT and greater academic community.” The MIT GSU and MIT CSSA also encouraged individuals and organizations to sign the letter, which gathered a total of 1166 signatures.
In response to the open letter, Picard issued an amended statement on Dec. 18. Picard acknowledged that her talk’s reference was an example of stereotyping, which was harmful for the Chinese community at MIT and for those belonging to the broader research community. “Our students and colleagues who are Chinese or Chinese American frequently contend with deliberate ethnic stereotyping that feeds an atmosphere of mistrust,” Picard said. “That mistrust can lead to many kinds of problems, which in recent years have included outright discrimination and abuse.”
The MIT Administration has not released a statement regarding Picard’s remarks at the NeurIPS conference.