OpenAI Machine Learning Unconference 2016 Announcement

Overview

OpenAI announced a free Machine Learning Unconference to take place on Friday and Saturday, October 7-8, 2016 at its office in San Francisco. The event is driven by participants rather than an organizing committee and is intended for people with technical fluency in machine learning who want to help each other advance the state of the art.

Motivation

Conferences serve two main roles: social gathering and publication, which OpenAI views as orthogonal and better served separately. The unstructured social time at conferences, such as mealtimes, is what attendees find most valuable. By hosting a minimally‑structured unconference, OpenAI aims to maximize interactivity and experiment with new discussion formats that attendees develop.

"We’d like to try instead hosting an event focused on the most valuable part of any conference: the people."

"A minimally‑structured unconference provides an opportunity for an experiment, to see what kinds of new formats attendees will develop, and find out which of these are most effective."

Format and Agenda

Because the event follows the spirit of an unconference, OpenAI will not provide a specific schedule. Attendees are encouraged to use the Gitter chat to plan topics of discussion ahead of time and to bring posters describing machine learning work they wish to share.

"It would go against the spirit of the unconference for us to provide a specific schedule, but we suggest attendees use the Gitter chat to plan a few topics of discussion ahead of time."

"All attendees are also encouraged to bring a poster describing machine learning work that would be interesting or useful for other attendees to learn about."

Who Should Attend

Anyone involved in machine learning research or applications is welcome, with particular expectation of PhD students, faculty members, industry research scientists, and software engineers using ML in applications or building ML infrastructure. OpenAI especially wants to support women, minorities, and other groups underrepresented in machine learning by offering a limited number of travel and lodging grants.

"Anyone who is involved in machine learning research or applications is welcome. We especially expect to see: PhD students, faculty members, and industry research scientists. Software engineers using machine learning in applications or building machine learning infrastructure."

"We’re particularly excited to support women, minorities, and members of other groups underrepresented in machine learning. OpenAI will provide a limited number of travel and lodging grants for members of these groups."

Logistics and Support

OpenAI is sponsoring and hosting the event, but the event itself has no formal organization—it consists of people who find the invitation interesting meeting to discuss machine learning. OpenAI will provide lunch and snacks; participants must arrange their own travel and lodging.

"OpenAI is sponsoring and hosting the event, but the event itself has no official organization—it’s just people who find this invitation interesting, meeting to discuss machine learning."

"OpenAI will provide lunch and snacks. Participants are responsible for arranging their own travel and lodging."

Attendee Sample

Based on early signups, a representative sample of expected attendees includes:

  • Conrado Miranda, PhD student, University of Campinas
  • Fei Sha, Associate Professor, UCLA
  • Georgia Gkioxari, PhD student at Berkeley
  • Leila Wehbe, Postdoctoral Researcher at Berkeley
  • Many members of Google Brain, including Samy Bengio, Greg Corrado, Douglas Eck, and Dumitru Erhan
  • Many members of the OpenAI team
  • Mehdi Mirza, PhD student, Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms
  • Nicolas Papernot, Google PhD Fellow in Security, Pennsylvania State University
  • Serena Yeung, PhD student, Stanford University
  • Sudnya Diamos, Data Science and Algorithms Engineer, Attune, Inc
  • Úlfar Erlingsson, lead of security efforts at Google Research
  • Wendy Shang, Software Engineer, Oculus

Attendees can discuss plans and logistics in the Gitter chat or email Ian at OpenAI with questions.

Code of Conduct and Capacity

By attending, participants agree to abide by OpenAI’s code of conduct. The event has a capacity of 150 people, and OpenAI will tune the acceptance list to ensure a diverse and interesting group.

"By attending, you agree to abide by our code of conduct."

"We’d like to welcome everyone, but we only have capacity for 150 people. We’ll tune the acceptance list to ensure an interesting conference with a diversity of people and perspectives."

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