AAAI is a huge and highly respected conference on artificial intelligence. This year it was held in the gorgeous Jewel City of Singapore and the attendee count approached 10k people though it never felt quite that packed. It took place at the retro, but very Singaporean and comfortable conference centre called the Singapore Expo. It’s called a conference, but don’t let that fool you 🤣It’s like a resort and convention for researchers. A few moments of hard work and diligence, and many more moments of playing and having a good time. I learned first hand about the vacation vibe of these conferences several years ago in Tokyo, and while the highly social aspect and hook-up culture surprised me at the time, I now know it par for the course.

At a locale with so many researchers packed in, obvs it would hold the potential for many career opportunities. Whether that be new jobs, new collaborations, funding, soft-power positions on committees, volunteering, etc. I went for the networking. I came not expecting anything and just wanting to grow my network in Singapore. And grow my network I did! I literally met hundreds of people and all of them, one way or another, in AI. Yep, it was a great experience and I will definitely do it again.

So because there were so many talks, the committee organized the conference by making a number of apps available to attendees. We used these apps to navigate the complex schedule and keep ourselves organized. Of course the apps needed to be fluid, because you don’t know until you go. There were several times I had a talk, demo, or activity on my schedule only to discover upon turning up that I really didn’t find it that helpful. Attending talks for the sake of new knowledge is great, but I always get really excited when I can directly see how some advancement, tool, or research is directly applicable to my work or my colleagues’ work. There were a few such talks, but one such talk really stood out. And ironically, it was the very first talk I attended when I walked in the conference for the very first time bright eyed and confused!

So there were lots of highlights I can mention from this conference. One was of course the great work and demo I was introduced to on Rashomon sets. These sets are highly flexible, in the sense that they can be represented in different ways; the authors represented them as sets of decision trees. But, what I really like is how they can be selected to meet the user’s constraints and visualised with the demo tool. This work is less important for me now than it would have been in the past, but it is still very important. Where I would be tempted to use it is with applications that require AI-Human alignment and incorporating human preferences. One professor I spoke with was especially interested in AI trustworthiness and alignment, while past work I’ve done required deeper knowledge into the motivations and decision making pathways of key decision makers. I feel like Rashomon sets can be useful to both objectives.

So sciency stuff wasn’t the only highlight, of course highlights include the people! I made SOOOOO many friends. And not just friends like at some random meetup where you don’t have much in common and don’t have anything to say after 3 times hanging out. I met MY PEOPLE 💗 By my people, I mean like-minded individuals with compatible values, interests, and objectives. This level of compatibility is very important to me. Some people don’t care. If you have a pulse and can be pleasant and have some time to waste on them, they will be your friend. I tend to be a little more selective, because the type of people you surround yourself with can have an impact beyond what you can forecast. In short, I met some great people in my very niche research field. I already knew people in this niche all over Europe, but they tended to be experienced researchers who had pioneered the field. These new people from the conference are the next generation, the millennials and gen zs that will inherit the throne 🤣 I don’t have a preference. Age doesn’t matter to me among my friends, people from every phase of life have something interesting and valuable to contribute. But, now my research circle is a little more diverse, and that’s a good thing. I also was able to make a few new friends who are extremely interesting and awesome (shout out to Surrey Hill, sassy DC, and group leader, you all know who you are!) and that’s not easy to do. All my new friends are people who I’m really excited to get to know better, to see at more conferences, and would be honoured to have enduring connections with for the rest of my life 🫰