This began from a controversy where Anima Anandkumar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_Anandkumar), Director of AI at nvidia, posted a list of people she blocked on Twitter, encouraging her followers to "cancel" them. I wrote more about this and linked to her tweets in a past discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25419871, but Anima Anandkumar has since deleted her tweets and then her account.
One of her targets is Pedro Domingos, who is a professor at the University of Washington and a well-known expert in the space (he authored "The Master Algorithm"). Domingos is also known for being against the infiltration of "woke" culture into academic institutions, because it corrupts the purity of research and introduces political biases. This came up recently because NeurIPS (an AI conference) is going to require an "impact statement" for all submitted research papers, which has raised concerns about political bias at the conference, since researchers will likely include pandering progressive impact statements just to get through the process without controversy. Anandkumar has been one of the prominent activists pushing for NeurIPS to include impact statements, and was formerly involved in a campaign to push NeurIPS to be renamed from NIPS to NeurIPS (https://www.wired.com/story/ai-researchers-fight-over-four-l...).
There's a few things that vary from editorialization to simple inaccuracy.
> This came up recently because NeurIPS (an AI conference) is going to require an "impact statement" for all submitted research papers, which has raised concerns about political bias at the conference
Is sort of true. It already did require these statements this year. And while there was some "concern", I'd say that most of it was from, like, Domingos and random HN commenters. I don't think there was any serious concern about this. But that's mostly semantic I admit.
I also think that
> Director of AI at nvidia, posted a list of people she blocked on Twitter, encouraging her followers to "cancel" them.
Is a mischaracterization. See the long thread here[0] in reply to this user, where I ask for the specific actions Anandkumar took that were problematic. Despite a long conversation with multiple people, the only concrete thing anyone brought up that was "problematic" appears to have been HN editorialization, and not actually a thing Anandkumar herself said.
The context about this being related to Domingos and Anandkumar's disagreement is all almost certainly true. But for example, I don't know what in particular GP means when they say "Anandkumar (who tried to cancel him)". I doubt you do either, and if pressed, I'm not sure that GP could give a definition that should elicit concern. They had a disagreement on twitter. She's since apologized for making anyone feel uncomfortable. He has not, despite calling people "deranged", accusing Anandkumar of watching too much internet porn, and various other things.
One of her targets is Pedro Domingos, who is a professor at the University of Washington and a well-known expert in the space (he authored "The Master Algorithm"). Domingos is also known for being against the infiltration of "woke" culture into academic institutions, because it corrupts the purity of research and introduces political biases. This came up recently because NeurIPS (an AI conference) is going to require an "impact statement" for all submitted research papers, which has raised concerns about political bias at the conference, since researchers will likely include pandering progressive impact statements just to get through the process without controversy. Anandkumar has been one of the prominent activists pushing for NeurIPS to include impact statements, and was formerly involved in a campaign to push NeurIPS to be renamed from NIPS to NeurIPS (https://www.wired.com/story/ai-researchers-fight-over-four-l...).
This new letter to ACM was already discussed on Hacker News (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25575321). The letter includes Domingos as an initial signatory, and the group the letter is being sent to (Communications of the ACM) lists Anima Anandkumar (who tried to cancel him) on their Editorial Board (https://cacm.acm.org/about-communications/editorial-board/).