Separating AI research from geopolitics is becoming more difficult

Top of the world An artificial intelligence research conference, the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems — known as NeurIPS — became the latest organization this week to become embroiled in a growing conflict between geopolitics and global scientific collaboration. Conference organizers announced controversial new restrictions on international participants and then quickly canceled them after Chinese AI researchers threatened to boycott the event.

“This is a potential watershed moment,” says Paul Triolo, a partner at consulting firm DGA-Albright Stonebridge, who studies U.S.-China relations. Triolo sees attracting Chinese researchers to NeurIPS as good for American interests, but some American officials have pushed American and Chinese scientists to separate their work — especially in the field of artificial intelligence, which has become a particularly sensitive topic in Washington.

This incident could deepen political tensions around AI research, as well as discourage Chinese scientists from working at American universities and technology companies in the future. “At some point now, it will be difficult to keep basic AI research out of the world [political] “Photo,” Triolo says.

In its annual manuscript submission, issued in mid-March, NeurIPS organizers announced updated restrictions for participation. The rules stipulate that the event cannot provide services including “peer review, editing and publishing” to any organization subject to US sanctions, and link them to a database of sanctioned entities. It included companies and organizations on the Bureau of Industry and Security’s entity list and those on another list with alleged ties to the Chinese military.

The new rules could have affected researchers at Chinese companies such as Tencent and Huawei who regularly submit their work to NeurIPS. The database also includes entities from other countries such as Russia and Iran. The United States places restrictions on dealing with these organizations, but there are no rules about academic publishing or conference participation.

The NeurIPS manual has since been updated to specify that the restrictions apply only to specially designated citizens and prohibited persons, a list used primarily for terrorist groups and criminal organizations.

“In preparing the NeurIPS 2026 guide, we included a link to the US government’s sanctions tool that covers a much broader set of restrictions than those NeurIPS already has to follow,” event organizers said in a statement on Friday. “This error was due to miscommunication between NeurIPS and our legal team.”

Before changing course, conference organizers initially said the new rule related to “legal requirements that apply to the NeurIPS Foundation, which is responsible for sanctions compliance,” adding that it was seeking legal advice on the issue.

Immediate backlash

The new rule sparked a swift backlash from AI researchers around the world, especially in China, which produces a large amount of cutting-edge machine learning papers and is home to a growing share of the world’s top AI talent. Several academic groups there have issued statements condemning the action and, more importantly, discouraging Chinese academics from attending NeurIPS in the future. Some urged Chinese academics to instead contribute to local research conferences, which could help increase the country’s influence in related fields of science and technology.

The China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), an influential government-affiliated organization for scientists and engineers, said on Thursday that it will stop providing funding to Chinese researchers who travel to attend NeurIPS and will instead use the funds to support domestic and international conferences that “respect the rights of Chinese scientists.”

CAST also said it will not count publications at the 2026 NeurIPS conference as academic achievements when evaluating future research funding. It’s not clear whether the organization will reverse course now that NeurIPS has backed away from the new rule.