Top 12 Must-Attend AI and Machine Learning Conferences in 2022

Why You Should Attend AI/ML Conferences This Year

2022 is shaping up to be an exciting year in the world of artificial intelligence and machine learning. As an AI/ML practitioner, attending industry conferences is one of the best investments you can make in your professional development.

Not only will you get exposed to cutting-edge research and technologies, you‘ll also have the opportunity to connect with like-minded experts, learn new skills through hands-on workshops and tutorials, and even find inspiration for your next big AI/ML project. Plus, many conferences offer virtual attendance options this year, making it easier than ever to participate no matter where you‘re located.

Ready to mark your calendar? Here‘s our roundup of the top 12 AI and machine learning conferences you won‘t want to miss in 2022:

1. AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-22)

• Date: February 22 – March 1, 2022
• Location: Vancouver, Canada + Virtual
• Registration: $425 – $950

One of the biggest annual AI conferences, AAAI-22 will convene leading researchers to share theoretical insights and cutting-edge advances across subfields like machine learning, knowledge representation, computer vision, and natural language processing. The technical program features keynotes, panels, tutorials, workshops, and paper presentations.

This year‘s conference includes exciting keynote talks like "AI for Social Good" by Milind Tambe and "Commonsense Reasoning for Natural Language Understanding" by Yejin Choi. There‘s also an extensive workshop program, industry expo, and unique events like the "Human-Aware AI" special track focused on developing AI systems that are ethical, unbiased, and beneficial to humanity.

2. International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2022

• Date: April 25-29, 2022
• Location: Virtual
• Registration: Free; additional cost for workshops

ICLR is a selective conference focused specifically on deep learning, attracting groundbreaking research in areas like unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, optimization, reasoning, and open-ended learning.

While this year‘s event is fully virtual, ICLR still packs in plenty of opportunities to learn and engage, with live discussion sessions, virtual socializing spaces, and nearly 50 workshops on topics like "Self-Supervised Learning for Speech and Audio Processing" and "Practical Machine Learning for Developing Countries."

3. IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2022

• Date: June 19-24, 2022
• Location: New Orleans, Louisiana + Virtual
• Registration: $275 – $1,200

If you work in computer vision and visual AI, CVPR is the place to be. As one of the world‘s top three academic conferences in this field, CVPR showcases an incredible volume and diversity of research—last year‘s event featured over 1,600 papers!

For the latest innovations in areas like 3D vision, scene understanding, and visual reasoning, you‘ll want to catch oral and poster presentations of accepted papers. But CVPR isn‘t just for academics; there‘s a growing industry presence, with an expo hall, sponsored talks/workshops, and even a VIP lounge for recruiting top computer vision talent.

4. International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2022

• Date: July 17-23, 2022
• Location: Baltimore, Maryland + Virtual
• Registration: TBA

As the name suggests, ICML is a premier venue for advances in all aspects of machine learning, including deep learning, online learning, optimization, statistical learning theory, and reinforcement learning. It‘s also a highly competitive conference, with only around 20% of submissions accepted in recent years.

In addition to the main conference with paper presentations, keynotes, and panels, ICML also runs an extensive workshop and tutorial program. A few intriguing workshops on the docket for 2022 include "ML for Healthcare" and "Neglected Assumptions in Causal Inference."

5. KDD 2022

• Date: August 14-18, 2022
• Location: Washington, D.C.
• Registration: TBA

KDD, or the ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, is a top-tier conference for data science, data mining, and large-scale data analytics. It brings together researchers and practitioners interested in turning raw data into insights and building data-intensive intelligent systems.

What sets KDD apart is its applied industry focus. The conference program is filled with hands-on tutorials and case studies from companies leveraging data science and AI/ML in the real world. There are even special tracks like Applied Data Science and Deep Learning Day geared towards industry and practice.

6. Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) 2022

• Date: May 22-27, 2022
• Location: Dublin, Ireland + Virtual
• Registration: TBA

ACL is a must for anyone working in natural language processing, computational linguistics, information retrieval, text mining, and related areas. It features the latest research on machine translation, dialogue systems, sentiment analysis, question answering, and more.

The main conference program includes paper presentations, keynotes, and exhibits. But ACL is also known for its high-quality tutorials and workshops that dive deep into specialized NLP topics—a few slated for 2022 include Commonsense Knowledge Graphs and Multimodal and Grounded Semantics.

7. Interspeech 2022

• Date: September 18-22, 2022
• Location: Incheon, Korea
• Registration: TBA

For speech and audio processing, Interspeech is the conference to beat. It covers the whole spectrum of AI/ML applied to speech—automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech synthesis, paralinguistics, speaker verification, and more.

Interspeech consistently attracts high-caliber, innovative research; a few highlights from last year include papers on self-supervised speech representation learning and personalized speech emotion recognition. Beyond papers, the 2022 conference will feature special events, challenges, and a "Show & Tell" session for demos.

8. Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022

• Date: November 28 – December 9, 2022
• Location: New Orleans, Louisiana + Virtual
• Registration: TBA

The largest and most prestigious AI/ML conference, NeurIPS is known for groundbreaking theoretical and empirical research in deep learning, reinforcement learning, computer vision, and related areas. With thousands of attendees and only 20-25% of papers accepted, it‘s an intense and competitive event.

What really distinguishes NeurIPS is the sheer variety of programs packed into the multi-day schedule. In addition to presentations of accepted papers, there are invited talks, tutorials, competitions, demonstrations, affinity group meetings, and too many workshops to count (there were over 50 last year!). If you can only make it to one AI/ML conference in 2022, NeurIPS would be an excellent choice.

9. International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) 2022

• Date: July 23-29, 2022
• Location: Vienna, Austria
• Registration: TBA

IJCAI is a top-tier general AI conference that‘s been running since 1969, making it one of the longest-standing academic AI gatherings. In contrast to more specialized conferences, IJCAI welcomes research on all aspects of AI, from foundational work to cutting-edge applications.

Alongside papers presented in the main technical track, IJCAI features thematic special tracks such as AI and Autonomy, AI and Climate Change, and the Future of Work. Notably, the conference also has a strong emphasis on AI ethics and safety—this year‘s event includes a workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Social Good and a special track on AI, Ethics, and Society.

10. European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) 2022

• Date: August 29 – September 8, 2022
• Location: Vienna, Austria
• Registration: TBA

Like IJCAI, ECAI is a highly respected general AI conference that covers the full breadth and depth of the field. It alternates years with IJCAI, with a special focus on AI developments coming out of Europe.

One unique aspect of ECAI is its electronic proceedings: in addition to the usual PDF collection of papers, the conference publishes its proceedings as an interactive website where you can provide feedback, discuss papers with authors and attendees, and even suggest changes to papers in real-time. It‘s an innovative model for fostering engagement and collaboration.

ECAI is also known for high-quality workshops and tutorials on both established and emerging topics in AI. This year‘s program includes workshops on Hybrid Intelligence for Natural Language Processing and Evolutionary Computation in AI.

11. International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2022

• Date: October 23-27, 2022
• Location: Kyoto, Japan
• Registration: TBA

For state-of-the-art robotics powered by AI and machine learning, IROS is the premier international forum. It welcomes research spanning mechatronics, control, perception, navigation, human-robot interaction, and related topics underpinning intelligent embodied systems.

One special focus at IROS 2022 will be on Embodied AI for a Symbiotic Society—how intelligent robots can collaborate with and assist humans in everyday environments. But the conference scope is broad, featuring tracks like Robot Perception and Learning, Cognitive Robotics, and Robot Manipulation and Autonomous Grasping. With technical sessions, forums, panel discussions, workshops, tutorials, and exhibitions, IROS really immerses you in the cutting edge of intelligent robotics.

12. Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI) 2022

• Date: August 1-5, 2022
• Location: Virtual
• Registration: TBA

Rounding out our list is a more specialized AI conference dedicated to managing and reasoning under uncertainty using principled probabilistic approaches. UAI welcomes theoretical and applied research in areas like Bayesian modeling, causal inference, probabilistic programming, and statistical learning theory.

Since UAI is a smaller, single-track conference, there are ample opportunities to engage in deep technical discussions and form connections with other attendees working on uncertainty in AI. Alongside paper presentations, UAI 2022 will feature keynote talks, panels, and several topically-focused workshops.

More AI/ML Conferences to Consider

There are far too many wonderful AI/ML conferences to fit in a single list, but here are a few more worth looking into for 2022:

• International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS)
• International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS)
• Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS)
• International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI)
• Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV)
• International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER)
• International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR)

An Exciting Future for AI and Machine Learning

2022 promises to be a landmark year for AI and machine learning research. Based on the lineups at these leading conferences, we can expect to see significant advances in areas like robotics, multi-modal learning, reasoning and planning under uncertainty, and human-AI collaboration. We‘ll also see increasing attention on making AI systems safe, robust, and beneficial to society.

Whether you‘re an academic, industry practitioner, or somewhere in between, attending one or more of these top conferences is an unparalleled opportunity to keep your finger on the pulse of AI/ML innovation. And with many events offering virtual attendance options, it‘s never been more accessible to plug into the global AI/ML community and potentially even present your own work.

So, which of these conferences caught your eye? Whichever one you choose, you‘re bound to come away with fresh inspiration, ideas, and relationships to fuel your AI/ML journey. Get those calendar invites sent and start counting down to an exciting year of AI/ML discovery ahead!