Definition
Plain language
A major annual machine-learning research conference.
As stated in the literature
The International Conference on Machine Learning, a leading ML venue; one of the proceedings audited for fabricated citations and, with ICLR 2026, an early adopter of hallucinated-reference desk-rejection policies.
Why it matters: As a leading venue, its policies — like rejecting papers with hallucinated references — set expectations that ripple across the field.
For example, researchers with a new machine-learning method might aim to present it at ICML to reach a broad expert audience.
Heard on the show
“They audited about forty-eight thousand accepted papers and over two and a half million references across ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS, and USENIX Security.”Episode 201 — One in Four NeurIPS Papers Cites a Reference That Doesn't Exist