For what it’s worth, my view on the value of conferences is that a huge proportion of the value comes from meeting new people, catching up with people who live elsewhere, having research discussions, etc. I’ve occasionally found out about a paper I wouldn’t have otherwise, but this is a smaller fraction of the value for me. Language model research is generally behind the state of the art of what’s available inside labs, and a huge fraction of papers at conferences won’t replicate or are too toy or otherwise end up never becoming useful.
For what it’s worth, my view on the value of conferences is that a huge proportion of the value comes from meeting new people, catching up with people who live elsewhere, having research discussions, etc. I’ve occasionally found out about a paper I wouldn’t have otherwise, but this is a smaller fraction of the value for me. Language model research is generally behind the state of the art of what’s available inside labs, and a huge fraction of papers at conferences won’t replicate or are too toy or otherwise end up never becoming useful.