Jan LeCun, an ICLR co-founder, advocated less gatekeeping after he and Joshua and Jeff experienced years of rejection for early deep-learning and neural-network papers when the field was not popular.

“And so I think science needs less gatekeeping. And even though ICLR with Jan LeCun was started as one of the co-founders of ICLR back in the day,”

“he also wanted less gatekeeping because he too was rejected for many years together with Joshua and Jeff.”

“Jeff, with all their early deep learning and neural net papers,”

“because it was just not the hot thing.”