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Major AI conference is moving to Africa in 2020 due to visa issues
- CathyWest 8y agoIsn’t Trudeau’s Canada supposed to be be a free-for-all “post-national” state?
- thrw7877 8y agoIn addition to helping other countries, which I think they should rightfully do and am happy to hear about. I wonder if the A.I. community will invest in educating the lesser privledged in their local communities? Mainly those from poor areas that don’t have access to technology and educational resources?
- anewhnaccount2 8y agoThis is whataboutism.
- claydavisss 8y agoCan someone please trace the origin of this imbecilic response? It comes up on practically every HN discussion now and proceeds from the assumption that the presence of contrary data is a logical fallacy. I'm growing nostalgic for the days when HN posters just blindly asked for "citations" or suggested "imposter syndrome" as reflexive and ostensibly-intelligent counterarguments. Maybe its time for vacuous catchphrase responses to be autoflagged as postmodern gibberish.
- enriquto 8y agoThis is a problem with the local politics of your country, nothing to do with the "A.I. community". This conference is not going elsewhere to "help poor people", but because it is too difficult for international researchers to go to the U.S.A., and many do not bother at all, resulting in a worse conference. I for one would not even consider going to the states for a conference, but often go to other countries.
- vbezhenar 8y agoThere's Internet, I hope that everyone in US have access. If you want to learn programming, just do it.
- nisuni 8y agoI welcome the choice of moving the conference to a place where there are no logistic problems. As a scientist, however, I abhor organizations such as BlacksInAI: in science there’s no place for identity politics.
- Jare 8y ago> in science there’s no place for identity politics Sounds like a "theory vs practice thing". Do you believe that identity should not, and/or does not affect a person's ability to practice science to the best of their potential? Of course I believe that in theory it should not but in practice it does. Organizations that try to correct, compensate, steer, etc. things towards where they should be, need to exist because things are not where they should be. There is nothing unscientific about it, but maybe you have data to prove otherwise. (I personally have no idea if BlacksInAI does this job well or not. The choice of Ethiopia in this case does not look great)
- logicchains 8y ago>things are not where they should be Citation needed. >There is nothing unscientific about it, but maybe you have data to prove otherwise. If you make a claim that something should be done, the burden on proof is on you to substantiate that claim.
- andybak 8y ago> things are not where they should be Are you seriously trying to claim that science is a perfect meritocracy? Seriously?
- logicchains 8y ago>Are you seriously trying to claim that science is a perfect meritocracy? I'm not making any particular claim about science. I'm making a general claim about reason: someone making a moral argument must provide some reason or evidence to support that argument. In this particular case, it means that if someone wants to make a claim that there is something morally wrong with the distribution of scientists with respect to some particular characteristic, the onus is on them to support their claim (refute the null hypothesis).
- homarp 8y agofrom https://mobile.twitter.com/jm_alexia/status/1064206569141923843 https://mobile.twitter.com/jm_alexia/status/1064206569141923... "Homosexuality is a criminal offense in Ethiopia, there's no way I'm ever submitting an abstract to #ICLR next year... I can't risk my life. I guess there will be more racial diversity, at the cost of no more #LGBT diversity."
- baddox 8y agoNote that many US states also have sodomy laws, so in those states you’ve just got to hope that the 2003 Supreme Court decision sticks around.
- nolok 8y agoNote that for a lot of people (me included), Africa is a social and legal black box and that is a major cause of concern for such issues (justified or not). Some countries have unreliable courts and/or people/tribal justice on the street is common, other are more modern, and except for a few specific countries I don't know which ones falls into which group. (what I'm saying is, you're more scared of the unknown, and the various countries of Africa is much less known by the average hn'er than the american system)
- baddox 8y agoI’m afraid I was misunderstood. I didn’t intend to minimize the threat to LGBT people in Ethiopia. I meant to point out that the threat is also still potentially just around the corner in many places.
- mikeash 8y agoThose laws have been overturned. That they’re still on the books means nothing.
- tziki 8y agoSource?
- raverbashing 8y agoUnfortunately this sounds more like a gimmick than anything else. I have a small suspicion that those who decided for that never set foot in the countries considered for this (though I might be wrong). Though it is undeniable that there is talent there and we should try to make things easier to them, there is a limit and a compromise in making things not harder for other people as well. As someone familiar with 3rd world country business, a lot of things people take for granted is not trivial
- rtpg 8y agoJust as a datapoint: the author of cURL basically can’t go to the US right now for.... some reason https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2018/07/28/administrative-purgatory/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2018/07/28/administrative-purgat... The opaqueness of the US system is pretty high. I do agree that other places have bigger problems. There won’t be too many conferences in Saudi Arabia I bet.
- _jgdh 8y agoI love Daniel and the amazing work he’s done over the last several years ... but that blog reads like a parody. He’s complaining about filling forms like it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to him. Meanwhile, for folks who aren’t American/Canadian/European/Australian, this is just a regular Tuesday. Typically when I file for visas I have to give detailed statements of all my bank accounts, all my investments, my income tax statements for the last 3 years, a list of all the places I’ve travelled, medical insurance, a letter from my employer guaranteeing that I’ll be back and god knows what else. This was for an Australian visa btw, that allows visa free travel if you’re American, Canadian or European. That’s not even the half of it. A friend of mine applied for a Schenghen visa for a 6 day trip and got a 5 day visa. The border agent then harassed him on his way out for “overstaying” his visa. Heaven forbid that people with privilege are subjected to the horrors of filling forms.
- em-bee 8y agoyou have a point, but the issue is not the amount of forms he has to fill out, but rather the fact that he is neither getting a visa, nor being rejected with some explanation why.
- sandGorgon 8y agonot sure why they dont do India - has significant consular presence in African countries (african medical tourism is huge in India) as well as being much easier to reach from Western countries. We also have constitutional protection for LGBT communities and privacy - something that Ethiopia lacks. The Indian govt will throw money at you if you do something like this here.
- _jgdh 8y agoI don’t know that the Indian govt throws money at anything, so I’m not sure about that part.
- sandGorgon 8y agohere's a single point link to access all funding agencies - https://www.india.gov.in/research-development-funding-schemes-central-government-departments-and-agencies https://www.india.gov.in/research-development-funding-scheme... here's the govt budget for AI - https://inc42.com/buzz/budget-2018-ai-ml/ https://inc42.com/buzz/budget-2018-ai-ml/ NITI specifically recommends collaborative programs for funding (as well as ethics organizations) - http://niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/document_publication/NationalStrategy-for-AI-Discussion-Paper.pdf http://niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/document_publication/... there's a crap ton of govt funding for initiatives like this. I interact with the NITI Aayog personally on this.
- _jgdh 8y agoGood to know.
- Markoff 8y agoIndia has viavisa even for EU citizens and i had personal interview with consul to get tourist visa, heck even Iran was easier
- denzil_correa 8y agoWhen did you last travel to India? This has changed in the last 3 years or so. You can get a visa sitting in front of your computer. https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa/tvoa.html https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa/tvoa.html
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Radim 8y agoLest you think this is a problem only for Africans & USA: I was denied visa, going to present my paper at NIPS 2010 in Vancouver, Canada. Czech citizen (EU), PhD student at the time, with obvious ties to CZ. I fully respect each country's right to refuse anyone, including without providing a reason (as was the case with me). I see it as "their loss" :-) You pesky computer scientists, stay away!
- baybal2 8y agoYes, this distresses me the most, these random refusal are 99% caused by the person failing some arbitrary checkbox list, or edicts like "reduce number of visas to country N by N percents" so they feel pain
- falcor84 8y agoRegarding the right to refuse anyone, I was of the same opinion myself but mostly changed my mind after reading this article posted on HN: http://www.owl232.net/papers/immigration.htm http://www.owl232.net/papers/immigration.htm I now find this to be a very interesting and subtle ethical question
- rukittenme 8y agoReally? What aspect of his argument convinced you?
- lrajlich 8y agowhat's the tl;dr? I only read the primae facie rights section and 1) this is reasoning by analogy, 2) the analogies don't make sense..
- raverbashing 8y agoI don't buy it. Because it focuses too much on "supposed" rights of the immigrant and not the rights of the one already there (which, as much as the "no borders" people deny that more crimes and bad stuff happens with unchecked migration, it does happen).
- everybodyknows 8y ago
- gmueckl 8y agoStories like this make me realize how unfairly privileged I actually am by having the passport that I have. I can go damn near anywhere in the world without much fuss. But I was just lucky enough to be born on the right side of some line that somebody drew on a map at some time in the past. The folks a few km distant - on the other side of that line - don't have that same luxury. It is kind of sad that we have this way of carving up the world into arbitrary pieces and calling us "us" and them "the enemy".
- nolok 8y agoAs an extension to that, as someone else who has a french "powerful passport", you get so used to it that you feel very bothered when you actually need to get a visa for some place. Or worse, when you plan to go somewhere and a member of your group is not from such a country and needs a visa for a place that you didn't expect him to need one for. I'm glad it's like this for me, and I hope the world can keep moving forward in that direction (as an european I'm kind of used to no borders between countries, the same way US people move between states); but at the same time I'm not sure how healthy it is to have such privileges and not even recognize them as such anymore. I guess this is what causes the people from "our" countries calling themselves expat rather than immigrants (we've had a case this week again, where an english immigrant in France complained on twitter about immigrants coming to France ...). I believe remembering what is a privilege you are lucky have is important, maybe if we were better at that we would have less on the modern "social stupidity" issues (another matter entirely but if people knew how lucky they were of not having polio and/or knew someone related to them who got it, they would be much less likely to avoid vaccination ...).
- throwawayvisa 8y agoI'm someone who was born with a "shitty" passport. It's not the visa part, but rather I can't spontaneously just "go somewhere". All my travels need to be planned weeks, if not months, ahead. Fortunately, I'm on a path to acquire another citizenship and my children will have a "good" passport at birth.
- aerovistae 8y ago
- jfk13 8y agoWhy would the issue even come up? Do people go to AI conferences expecting to have sex there?
- elil17 8y agoBecause you don’t have to actually have sex to be arrested for homosexuality
- zeist 8y agoSure, because they would try to prosecute a foreigner for his sexuality during a science conference.
- Filligree 8y agoThey might. Going somewhere where your existence is illegal is a dumb idea.
- tomrod 8y agoIs it worth that risk exposure?
- GavinMcG 8y agoWhy do you think they wouldn't? What an odd default assumption – that a country wouldn't enforce its laws. Keep in mind that official enforcement isn't the only concern. Illegality can make people feel justified in taking matters into their own hands, and there have been anti-homosexual mobs and attacks in countries that recently criminalized homosexuality.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- shmel 8y agoOh well, just recently there was a thread about Canadians instructed to lie on US border that they never ever tried weed in their life unless they want to be banned. What makes you believe the same logic can't be applied here?
- xvilka 8y agoHopefully not only AI conferences will follow. For many it is a big problem to obtain a visa in time. Others just prefer even to skip the conference just to avoid the trouble.
- cauldron 8y agoIt's easy to just blame the authorities, but people should also see that almost any existing hurdle in the visa applying process is set up to solve a problem, while it's unfortuanate that these measures have unintended/undesirable effects, it also forestalled many visa fraud attempts. People from certain effectively balck-listed Chinese regions are much harder to get it done. I know here in China people would exploit every loophole and weak point they can find to get a visa to the US etc, either to study, born babies, or apply asylum. They would exchange latest info about where and which VO is easier to pass, how to best frame your story, like white middle-aged woman is more likely to pass etc, these behaviors in turn are pushing the bars higher and higher every year. It's like that border wall, there are realistic problems on field that need to be solved.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cauldron 8y agoSomeone requested me to provide evidence for my claims, but deleted? I'll post it anyway. I'm not a detective and don't have "evidence", all I said is what I saw first hand the accounts of people doing it. It's an entire industry, I'll just keep it simple and short. Americans genarally don't realize how much their passport worth in other parts of the world. The key is entering America, any other thing doesn't matter, if you want to smuggle you way in through Russai-Cuba-Mexico etc, you need to pay around 70-100K or something and it's not guaranteed. So how to legally enter America? Either through universities, medical reasons, or tourism. Like applying any for-profit American language school to "learn English", PHD and extend it endlessly. Once you entered, you can do what you wanted, to study then go back home, or to earn money, illegal overstaying waiting for citizenship amnesty, or applying for asylum. Chinese make up the majority of asylum seekers there. The recent hot topic of birth tourism, there are two ways, do it on a tourist visa and be possibly black-listed and visa revoked afterwards; or state your intention to the VO, you need to frame a perfect story here to convince the person that it's a medical cause, agencies will teach you to say American hospitals are better, pain-free whatever, just don't say you want that passport, but in reality all these people are there for the American passport. It's best to delete any related things on your phone such as Wechat opon entering in case evidence of visa fraud were found. There's also a service that agencies would help you to apply for EB1-A (Alien of Extraordinary Ability), publish paid papers, acquire paid awards etc. It's said (by his former friend) this guy paid audiences to fill an entire American theater for his show to help him apply it. https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2085956/chinese-comedian-zhou-libo-against-weapon-drug https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article... You guys remember couple months ago, America said they no longer accept domestic abuse as the reason for asylum? I can't say it's definitely related, but it's a known easy way to get quick green card, you pay for a short term sham marriage, then call the police for domestic abuse, go to court, then you can divorce, not having to wait out 2 years' marriage.
- aligshow 8y agoAfrica is not a safe or friendly nation. Africans in the USA are hostile. I am a racist and am proud of the fact that I view Africans in the USA as enemy combatants and advocate for euthanizing Africans. Yep. You heard that right. I am proud to defend the USA against the Africans. I hate them and I want the ones if the USA dead or gone or enslaved. The Emancipation proclamation was a mistake. Africans need to be enslaved or they will kill whites. They are killer humans, not normal people. Each African is a murderer. Africa is the murder continent.