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Major AI conference is moving to Africa in 2020 due to visa issues

venturebeat.com

101–110 of 121 posts

Re: Major AI conference is moving to Africa in 2020 due to visa issues

#101
post #28

Stories 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 w…

>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". It's not arbitrary, our ancestors in many cases fought and died to establish those lines so that they could live their lives how they wanted within those lines. They worked hard so that their children and grandchildren and fellow citizens could have better lives within those lines. To disco…

> They worked hard so that their children and grandchildren and fellow citizens could have better lives within those lines

That's sort of the whole point; often improving the lives of "fellow citizens" came at the expense of everyone else

Re: Major AI conference is moving to Africa in 2020 due to visa issues

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do not have any influence on which side of the line we are born : that's purely luck.

Do you exist before birth, in some other pool of souls?

The point is that the specific human body that ends up achieving self-awareness as me is determined entirely by chance.

Re: Major AI conference is moving to Africa in 2020 due to visa issues

#103
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there’s no place for identity politics. There's no such thing as an absence of identity politics. Only the politics of the status quo, which as we know has not been fantastic for PoC, women, LGBT+, ...

> There's no such thing as an absence of identity politics. Sure there is! Its name is meritocracy.

Sure, the concept exists but you'll be hard-pressed to point to instances of it existing currently... Overcoming historical biases doesn't happen just by deciding to be a meritocracy.

Re: Major AI conference is moving to Africa in 2020 due to visa issues

#104
post #17

Lest 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!

Regarding 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 I now find this to be a very interesting and subtle ethical question

what'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..

Re: Major AI conference is moving to Africa in 2020 due to visa issues

#105
post #67
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note 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.

Those laws have been overturned. That they’re still on the books means nothing.

Source?

Re: Major AI conference is moving to Africa in 2020 due to visa issues

#107
post #17

Lest 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!

Regarding 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 I now find this to be a very interesting and subtle ethical question

I 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).

Re: Major AI conference is moving to Africa in 2020 due to visa issues

#108
post #17

Lest 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!

This may not apply to your case but a lot of these conference immigration issues come from getting paid to speak. Depending on how you phrase it the inspector may treat it as “work” which is a big no-no.

Re: Major AI conference is moving to Africa in 2020 due to visa issues

#109
post #8

from 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."

When I read Africa I assumed they would be hosting it in South Africa which would be a much better choice for LGBT. Pretty much every other country would be a bad choice.

Re: Major AI conference is moving to Africa in 2020 due to visa issues

#110
post #17

Lest 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!

Regarding 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 I now find this to be a very interesting and subtle ethical question

The essay is missing a couple of sections:

3.6 Social Peace

When large swathes of the work force suffer falling income sure to competition from immigrants, anger will rise to dangerous levels.

3.7 Maintenance of Social Capacity for Self-Governance

Rule of law through government institutions, rather than by an elite of cronies through hired thugs, is possible only under certain conditions. Foremost of these being: 1) Engagement of citizens in government, going beyond the minimum of showing up at a polling booth every four years, and 2) Sufficient education to understand what's being voted upon.

Though both of these are questions of degree rather than Boolean propositions, both nevertheless remain requirements of existential gravity for any free society.

The election of 2016 shows just how imperiled 3.6 and 3.7 have become here in the United States.

The author, writing back in 2010, lacked the 2016 evidence.

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