Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Conference on Artificial General Intelligence


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. L Faraone  03:47, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Conference on Artificial General Intelligence

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Not seeing how this meets WP:GNG. There are plenty of GHITS for "Conference on Artificial General Intelligence", but of those that I have found, they're either unrelated to this conference, are primary sources, or are unreliable ones. Luke no 94 (tell Luke off here) 16:44, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The claim of non-notability is bogus because the user's search was weak. There are hundreds of hits on scholar.google.com, with links to papers on arXiv.org and dozens of Universities, video record of this conference taking place at Google and other other locations. What more is needed, a star on Hollywood Boulevard? sydhart (talk) 11:26, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I found plenty of GHITS with this term. I couldn't find anything third-party on this conference - there are a hell of a lot of hits that come up for all sorts of random things. As I stated in the nom. Luke no 94  (tell Luke off here) 11:34, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Luke, I don't catch your meaning... "this conference" seems to be an annual event, held in different places. I don't see any search hits that mention a conference other than the one described by the article. At the same time, it seems oddly difficult to find news (or scholarly articles) that discuss the conference rather than simply citing papers from it. Dhart, can you provide some direct links to articles that might be useful? Thanks, groupuscule (talk) 03:01, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
 * There are plenty of third party references in the GHITs that report on past and future conferences (and that's just links in the first 3 pages of results!). It's actually disingenious to claim othrewise, and a waste of everyone's time. Why didn't the user link to the GHITs in the in first place? I'd say this nomination is a nuisance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dhart (talk • contribs) 08:21, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:22, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:22, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:22, 26 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Weak keep: groupuscule, I agree with your synopsis that the references that Luke is finding are generally referring to the same event, and on that note I would normally Speedy Keep. But as Luke points out, the NOTEability of the Conference seems low. Dhart, the links you provide are all those of the conference's own press releases or publications, and do not meet NOTE. That is what Luke said in the nom, so I'd recommend AGF. That said, I did find several NOTEable references in H+ magazine, real articles written by a 3rd party about the topic. But that's only one source, I'd like to see more to be worthy of an outright keep. Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:09, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Came to the same conclusion: that H+ article is only high-quality source so far. Then I look to see who H+ is, and find that it's the magazine for "Humanity+". Ben Goertzel, the author of the article, is also the Vice Chair of Humanity+ ... and the "general Chair of the Artificial General Intelligence conference series"! So actually, we can't consider this source independent either.
 * Now, my intuition is that this a notable conference, and I'm really not itching to delete. But DHart, I feel like you're not making great strides by linking a bunch of blog posts from within the organization and describing them as "plenty of third party references". Forget "plenty"—can you focus on finding one or two high-quality independent reports? Frankly I'm surprised we haven't found these yet (I've looked too) since it does seem to be an interesting conference that's been held a number of times. groupuscule (talk) 04:14, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Perhaps try a variation on GHITs. Many 3rd party accounts, particularly in blogs. sydhart (talk) 03:51, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Blogs don't satisfy WP:RS 95% of the time. I'm struggling to see RS in your other link as well. Luke no 94  (tell Luke off here) 07:20, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Well there *are* reliable sources, plenty of them (see the Google Scholar link again), also many hours of conference presentations and interviews of speakers and attendees on YouTube, Vimeo, etc., so this nomination is about some subjective standard of 'how many' and 'how reliable' you think they are? What's the standard? Articles in the Wall Steet Journal and video from the CBS Evening News? That would make a pretty odd standard for an academic conference. The conference is *certainly notable* within its field, particularly given the noteriety of many of the speakers and attendees. For example, the *director of research* of Google gave the opening remarks at AGI-11 (he's also the man who literally 'wrote the book', a nearly univerally used unergraduate AI textbook); follow many of the other speaker links to find other people of noteriety in the field. An academic conference is just not the sort of thing that will make the mainstream press. Academic citations are the primary method of establishing both reliability and notability within the field, and I believe that is the standard that should apply here. dhart (talk) 12:14, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
 * YouTube is not a reliable source. Vimeo is not a reliable source. It would be nice if you could actually link some examples of in-depth, non-trivial coverage of this conference/set of conferences in 3rd-party reliable sources here, without constantly attacking me. Luke no 94  (tell Luke off here) 12:50, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
 * dhart, the problem here is that these arent 3rd party reports, they're simply people re-publishing the conference's own reports. A book listing on Amazon is not an RS, a book review on Amazon may be. To date all that I see that it really someone else writing about it is the H+ articles. So keep looking for more examples of that sort. As I said, I lean towards keep and am willing to be easily swayed. Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:48, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
 * My concern is that there are many ways to meet WP:GNG and we should be careful that an over-emphasis is not placed on 3rd party media reports when there's an abundance of other evidence (video and photographic records and indepentently cited published papers). I understand that 3rd party reports are important to verifying most articles, but not every article fits into the class where 3rd party reports are the best method of verification. At an academic conference, people show up, present their work to each other (there's a solid record of that), talk a lot, go away and do research (there's a solid record of that), then come back to subsequent conferences to reconnect, and the conference grows. It's not unusual for academic conferences to receive no 3rd party report type coverage, because science is generally done through peer review rather than through media reporting. For example, all of the papers in the published proceedings of the conference, published by the committee on behalf of all of the submitters for the benefit of all researchers in the field, as well as all of the presentations, go through a peer review process which is why citations to those papers can be found in other papers indepenent of the conference and published in major 3rd-party journals (independent journals reject papers with non-peer-reviewed citiations, whether reviewed by other journals' editorial committees or conference committees). My argument is that those citations should satisfy WP:RS. dhart (talk) 02:02, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Responding to the idea that the conference is notable because there are so many primary sources. I really want to agree with you, but I don't think it would be fair to include the AGI conf, on the strength of primary sources, when we exclude so many other events which lack the shiny futuristic glow of AGI. Like, there was a big debate about the article on Feminist Africa, which is a peer reviewed journal with abundant secondary literature! OTOH I do like with your idea that if an institution has valid practices we might accept it on those grounds, rather than appealing to fame. I think this idea deserves broader community discussion. In the meanwhile, it would be great if we could just ... find some independent sources ... somewhere ... :-) groupuscule (talk) 04:14, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
 * here is a reference to a co-confrerence held with AGI-12@Oxford last year on AGI safety and impacts. Since the AGI conference series itself is highly technical, the track on safety & impacts is the one more likely to receive any kind of media coverage. dhart (talk) 04:27, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
 * also an interview reference published at the IEET that explains the context of one of the AGI-12 interviews. dhart (talk) 04:37, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The ICA source is about a different conference, although it is related, and the IEET source seems like a primary one, although feel free to correct me about that. Luke no 94  (tell Luke off here) 07:42, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
 * It was a joint conference, same location, same tickeing, same people, and the ICA source directly references the AGI conference series by name. How is IEET a primary source? The interviewer interviewed many people at the conference, but he was not affiliated with the conference. dhart (talk) 03:55, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough, I now agree that the IEET one isn't primary, but the ICA source is still about a different conference, regardless of how related they are. Luke no 94 (tell Luke off here) 08:08, 2 June 2013 (UTC) 
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, L Faraone  01:46, 3 June 2013 (UTC)




 * Weak keep - like some of those above, I found plenty of sources, many of them "significant coverage", but few of them independent of the subject. I suppose that's to be expected for a conference like this - who else is going to write about it but those who spoke, attended or are otherwise interested in the subject? This, for example is a good source that provides more than significant coverage in a magazine not specifically connected to the conference. But, as was pointed out above, it's written by Ben Goertzel who has spoken at a couple of the conferences (though he only co-presented at the one he writes about in that article) and is now listed as an organiser. There's also industry-style coverage (like this) in publications like New Scientist. Then there's blog stuff like this from Robert M Wenzel who seems sufficiently well-respected for his blog to perhaps be a reliable source, with footnotes and everything. The New Scientist style stuff is probably the most convincing. I'm maybe not entirely there but I think there's just enough for me. Open to being convinced either way. Stalwart 111  02:39, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep Lot of little cites and independent cites. Produces its own works. And its awards have some recognition. Though it is an industry event, it seems to be used as a way to introduce papers and share research. Seems that it could end up meeting GNG. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:27, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, SarahStierch (talk) 19:35, 11 June 2013 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.