still many industry executives don't get the value of top-tier AI conf like ICML/ICLR/NeurIPS, they'd rather sit on some summit roundtable w…

still many industry executives don't get the value of top-tier AI conf like ICML/ICLR/NeurIPS, they'd rather sit on some summit roundtable waxing about AI governance, societal impact or whatever endgame narrative is trending that week. I go for two reasons: to learn from the smartest minds alive, and to reality-check myself. tbh >50% of the time I'm standing in front of an ICML poster with absolutely zero clue what the math is doing. but that's fine. I'm not there to look smart. I'm there to get smart. I used to think this obsession with academic conf was a little weird until I heard @AnjneyMidha put it perfectly in his convo with swyx on @latentspacepod: “[…]and somebody had told me, yeah he's amazing, but he's a researcher. I was like, what? What do you mean he's a researcher? He's not a CEO, not a founder, just a researcher. Not a CEO. Are you crazy?? Being a CEO, nominally speaking, is not that hard. Being a good CEO is hard. Being a great CEO actually requires a level of performance that competitive scientists who have already published the top of their field have accomplished.” This is easily the best episode I've heard in a while. Anjney also gets into his views on life and death, which really got me thinking.

Source: Swyx (X) | 2026-07-03