Machine learning conferences have always played an important role in the world of data science. They're a place to announce new research, discuss current issues, and connect with the community. They also help to promote new areas of research and development through Q&A sessions, workshops, and tutorials.
However, getting to these conferences is often a challenge, and for years many have argued for virtual conferences. These reasons range from the visa issues that have barred researchers from attending NeurIPS in the past, to Turing Award recipient Yoshua Bengio himself making a case for conferences as a contributing factor to climate change.
2020 has seen the first real foray into virtual conferences for machine learning, with major conferences like ICLR 2020 opting to go entirely online. And as the world adapts to working within the COVID-19 pandemic, other conferences are now following suit.
Below I've compiled a list of five major conferences that will be online in 2020. You'll find conference dates, important information, workshop details, and links to learn more. I hope it provides an opportunity to attend a conference you might otherwise not have been able to. :)
ICRA 2020 (The International Conference of Robotics and AI)
Date: June 1st, 2020
Details: The International Conference of Robotics and AI is considered by many to be the largest robotics meeting in the world. Workshop topics are planned to cover robotic surgery, construction and architecture, machine learning, and real-world deployment of legged robots.
Official conference page: Available here.
CVPR 2020 (International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition)
Date: June 14th - June 19th, 2020
Details: CVPR is the premier conference for research and development in the field of computer vision. Though the main conference and tutorials have yet to be announced, scheduled workshops include learning from imperfect data, skin image analysis, multi-object tracking and segmentation, as well as computer vision for fashion.
Official conference page: Available here.
COLT 2020 (The Annual Conference on Learning Theory)
Date: July 9th - July 12th, 2020
Details: The 33rd Annual Conference on Learning Theory has now moved online, and features keynote speakers David Blei (Columbia University), Salil Vadhan (Harvard University), and Rebecca Willett (University of Chicago). Along with keynote presentations, the conference is also home to research paper presentations, and dedicated sessions for the presentation of open problems in machine learning.
Official conference page: Available here.
ICML 2020 (The International Conference on Machine Learning)
Date: July 12th - July 18th, 2020
Details: Considered the premier gathering for professionals dedicated to the advancement of machine learning, ICML 2020 will include a virtual expo day, tutorials and workshops, and conference sessions. Workshops will cover a range of topics from object-oriented learning and robustness in deep learning to generalization and reinforcement learning and the challenges in deployment and monitoring.
Official conference page: Available here.
AI and Deep Learning Virtual Summit
Date: September 17th, 2020
Details: The Deep Learning Virtual Summit is REWORK's largest virtual summit, and includes speakers from Facebook, DeepMind, and UCL. The conference aims to be a bridge between research advancements and real-world applications in business and society. The 2020 conference will include interactive Q&A events, a platform to encourage online networking, and access to complimentary presentations on topics featured during the conference.
Official conference page: Available here.
Conferences for machine learning and AI are being forced to adapt to new information and circumstances, and it's likely that others will also move online too. If you want to keep up to date with information on other conferences being held this year, here's a detailed list covering major conferences in 2020 and 2021.