NIPS 2016: A survey of tutorials, papers, and workshops Two Sigma

Since its launch in 1987, the annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) has brought together researchers working on neural networks and related fields, but it later diversified to become one of the largest conferences in machine learning. In recent years, the trend towards deep learning has brought the conference closer to its roots. The 2016 program spanned six days (Dec 5 to 10) and included tutorials, oral and poster presentations, workshops, and invited talks on a broad range of research topics. Following their previous Insights post on ICML 2016, Two Sigma researchers Vinod Valsalam and Firdaus Janoos discuss below the notable advances in deep learning, optimization algorithms, Bayesian techniques, and time-series analysis presented at NIPS 2016. With 550 accepted papers and 50 workshops, the number of attendees more than doubled in the past two years (from more than 2500 in 2014 to over 5000 in 2016), demonstrating rapidly growing interest in machine learning and artificial intelligence. That included strong industry participation (Two Sigma was among the more than 60 sponsors), both for recruiting talent as well as for presenting advances in the field. Several interesting invited talks were given by researchers who are established in both academia and industry.