NIPS changes its abbreviation to NeurIPS

A conference with an old acronym

The Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems began in 1987, and by 2018 it was one of the three primary conferences of high impact in machine learning and AI research. Its long-standing abbreviation was NIPS.^[1]

By then the meeting had also become a place where researchers organised around their identities: Black in AI emerged from the conference in 2017, and Queer in AI in 2016.^[1] The 2018 edition was held in Montreal, Canada.^[1]

Criticism of the name

By 2018 a few commentators were criticising the abbreviation as encouraging sexism, because of its association with the word nipples, and as being a slur against Japanese.^[1]

Pressure built through several channels. According to a report in the Chinese newspaper Science and Technology Daily, in April 2018 more than 120 scholars at Johns Hopkins University signed a letter calling for the conference to be renamed.^[3] Nvidia research director Anima Anandkumar launched an online petition with the hashtag ProtestNIPS against keeping the name; it was signed by researchers including Jeff Dean and Ian Goodfellow, and the sponsor Recursion Pharma said it was withdrawing its support because the name had not been changed.^[2]

The board itself surveyed the community. A board survey published on October 17 found that about 30% of respondents, including 40% of the voting women, agreed or strongly agreed with renaming.^[3]

A decision, then a reversal

In October 2018 the NIPS Foundation board, having completed its review in Montreal, concluded that the conference name would not change. That decision followed a community poll that failed to yield a clear consensus on renaming, or on a better-regarded alternative name.^[2]

The reversal came about a month later. In mid-November 2018 the Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation Board of Trustees announced by community email that the acronym was changing to NeurIPS, writing that "The name NeurIPS has sprung up organically as an alternative acronym, and we're delighted to see it being adopted".^[2] The Science and Technology Daily report dates a board statement to November 16, 2018, in which the board said it was "happy to see the abbreviation NeurIPS being adopted" and asked participants at that year's meeting to use the new abbreviation.^[3]

What changed in practice

The change was not only an announcement. The conference's official website address was switched from nips.cc to neurips.cc, and the owner of the neurips.com domain, Stanford PhD student Peter Henderson, donated the domain to the Foundation.^[2]

The board also announced that all signage and the program booklet for the 2018 meeting in Montreal would refer either to the full conference name or to NeurIPS, and that sponsors would be asked to do the same; a branding company would be hired to design a new logo.^[2] According to the Science and Technology Daily report, participants at that year's meeting were asked to use the new abbreviation.^[3]

Why it is remembered

What makes the episode notable is the sequence: a survey and a poll that showed no clear consensus, a board decision in October to keep the name, and then a change of course within weeks, driven by an argument that had been made in the community and in an open petition rather than settled by a vote.^[2][3] The criticism itself rested on how the old acronym read to people outside the field as much as inside it.^[1]

It also arrived at a moment when the conference was already making room for researchers who had felt marginal in the field: the affinity groups that had grown out of NeurIPS in 2016 and 2017 were part of the same period.^[1] The conference carried on under the new acronym, and the 2018 meeting was still held in Montreal as planned.^[1]