December 18, 2024
A further statement
Since my keynote presentation at NeurIPS, a great many people – from within MIT, from the broader academic community and beyond – have made clear to me that an example I gave in the talk struck a painful nerve.
NeurIPS is the premier conference in the field. Looking out on the attendees, one would see an outstanding group of global scholars in AI, a great many of them Chinese. In fact, I’ve since been told that a majority of the AI submissions were made by Chinese researchers. But over the last few days, I’ve come to see much more clearly that despite their leadership in the field, our students and colleagues who are Chinese or Chinese American frequently contend with deliberate ethnic stereotyping that feeds an atmosphere of mistrust. That mistrust can lead to many kinds of problems, which in recent years have included outright discrimination and abuse.
While I became aware at the end of my talk that I had caused significant pain, I have learned over these past days the depth of the damage I did. I have talked directly with students and faculty colleagues at MIT who are of Chinese descent and who have suffered horrible prejudice and mistreatment, and I am arranging to meet with other members of our Chinese community at MIT to learn more about what they are experiencing. For all of you in our community who are hurting because of my actions, I am deeply sorry for having caused you this additional pain.
Sincerely,
Dr. Rosalind W. Picard
Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology
MIT Media Lab