Why Did a Small Conference in an Obscure Field Invite Steve Bannon to Give the Keynote?

The political views of Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and co-founder of the far-right Breitbart News, are considered repugnant by many people in academe.

So when it was announced last week that Bannon would be a keynote speaker at the Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology conference, to be held at the University of Montana’s flagship campus in December, people revolted. Bannon is said to be an architect of Gamergate, a 2014 hashtag campaign that brought virtual hatred to women and minorities in the gaming community.

The other keynote speaker dropped out. The university distanced itself. A hashtag circulated, calling for those who had submitted papers to withdraw them, and for potential attendees to boycott the conference.

And at the center of the outrage is Adrian David Cheok, who in the past year has alienated his colleagues through a presentation on sex robots, and by his online emulation of the only hard-right figure more famous than Bannon: President Trump.

‘Sex and Love With Robots’

Much of the criticism of Cheok can be traced to a video of a virtual kiss.

Born in Australia, Cheok now directs the Imagineering Institute, in Malaysia, which focuses on on internet, digital media, and “mixed reality” research, according to its website. He is also a professor of pervasive computing at the University of London’s City campus. Last year he gave a keynote called “Sex and Love With Robots” at the Foundations of Digital Games conference.

During his presentation, Cheok played a video of himself and a student using a “Kissenger” device. It’s a contraption that sends the physical sensation of a kiss from one mouth to another.

Some in the audience weren’t pleased. The idea of kissing a student over the internet seemed “icky” to some, said Jim Whitehead, a professor of computational media at the University of California at Santa Cruz. When a scholar asked how Cheok navigates consent in his lab, many weren’t satisfied with his answers. He seemed surprised that people were raising the issue, Whitehead said, and he doubled down that what he was doing was appropriate.

A slide from Cheok’s presentation also drew ire. It listed “desired qualities” of a robotic partner. A woman will be, among other things, “uncomplaining, complimentary, pleasant to talk to,” the slide says, and she won’t be “rude” or “easily angered,” unless that’s desired. And finally, Cheok made a comparison between the fight for gay rights and the rights of robots, which some people bristled at. (Cheok, like many scholars in this field, seems earnest about his interest in human-robot love.)

On Twitter, attendees criticized Cheok’s presentation. Upon seeing the tweets, Cheok unleashed his anger at one female scholar in particular. “Even a 10 year old could understand my talk. SAD and DUMB!” he tweeted. “No wonder she works in a LOW RANK university!” he said in another.

Then, when conference organizers censured Cheok’s behavior in a statement, he insulted the conference itself. “NOBODY will care what does YOU or your BOARD say!” he tweeted.

Cheok’s tweets were “quite shocking,” said Julian Togelius, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at New York University. They went against the norms of academic discourse, he said.

And though Cheok seems to be a fan of right-wing politicians, including President Trump, his politics are not the issue, Togelius said. Rather, the issue is that he’s emulating the president’s behavior on Twitter.

That behavior lost Cheok fans in the field. Until recently, the Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology conference, which Cheok started 15 years ago, was a “well-regarded” small conference, Togelius said. Since the tweetstorm, Cheok’s reputation has faltered. And in August, members of the conference’s steering committee resigned.

Yoram Chisik, a former research fellow at the Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, said in an email that he had joined a committee in 2017 to return to the conference the “spark of insight and excitement” that had been tarnished by Cheok’s comments and actions. But it became apparent to Chisik that there was little formal oversight in place and no way of guaranteeing a rigorous review process, he said.

Springer Nature, which has published papers presented at the conference since 2012, will not do so this year. The submissions were “extremely low,” said Renate Bayaz, director of communications, in an email. Also, Bayaz said, there have been a “number of irregularities reported to us regarding the paper reviewing and selection process and regarding the organization of the ACE 2018 conference. These procedures do not comply with our publishing guidelines.” (The conference is not to be confused with that of the high-profile American Council on Education.)

Chisik also said the committee hadn’t been consulted about merging the technology conference with a different conference, on Love With Sex and Robots, which Cheok wanted to do. Finally, there was Cheok’s “insulting and belligerent behavior toward me, other members of the committee, and the community,” Chisik said.

After Chisik’s and two other committee members’ resignations, Cheok released a spew of tweets. He has called Chisik a “fat, bald monster” who works at a “tin-pot university in the middle of nowhere.” When asked about his language online, Cheok said in an interview that “it may look rude. But again, that’s my style. And I believe in telling it how it is.”

3 Reasons for Choosing Bannon

He had three reasons for choosing Bannon as a keynote speaker, Cheok said. Last year he and others watched YouTube videos of Bannon talking about “economic nationalism” and how it can “greatly help minorities.” There’s a severe shortage of black people in the technology world, Cheok said.

Bannon is also a pioneer in one sector of the gaming industry, finding a way to sell virtual goods for real money, Cheok said, and he’s a veteran of the film and entertainment industry.

What’s more, Cheok said, he believes in free speech. “People might not agree with the Steve Bannon solution,” he said, “but I think academic conferences should be the best place to have academic debates.”

Many of Cheok’s peers don’t buy his reasoning, or find it compelling enough to welcome Bannon to an otherwise under-the-radar academic conference in Missoula, Mont.

“I believe in free speech,” said Peter Gray, a research professor in psychology at Boston College. Gray, another keynote speaker, dropped out after the news about Bannon broke. “I believe that Bannon has every right to talk, that the conference has every right to invite him to speak,” Gray said. “But I personally felt revolted by being on the same stage with someone who I so strongly disagree with.”

Jesse Johnson, chair of the computer-science department at the University of Montana, worries that the conference will erode the credibility of the field, and hosting it will harm his university’s reputation. The conference will be held in the university’s student union, but the university itself is not a sponsor of the event.

Academics already have a small tool kit to establish credibility with the public, Johnson said, basically just peer-reviewed work, citations, conferences, and presentations. Cheok has “captured the tools of academia,” Johnson said, and “corrupted them for his own purposes.”

Katharine Neil, a game developer with a Ph.D. in computer science and games research, thinks the Bannon invitation was a ploy for attention. “This is a keynote for an obscure little academic conference, but [Cheok] made it public and free to the public,” she said. His intention is “quite clear,” she said.

And to Phoenix Perry, a games and computing lecturer at the University of London’s Goldsmiths campus, inviting Bannon was a “slap in the face.”

Perry said she was a target of Gamergate. And Breitbart News wrote about Gamergate eagerly through the lens of the hard-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who promoted the movement.

So to invite Bannon to a gaming and technology conference, Perry said, is a “disgusting move.” Since the announcement, #boycottACE has gained traction on Twitter. People are denouncing the conference and asking Cheok to resign.

Still, Perry is skeptical that calling Cheok out will have much of an effect. These days, she said, intentional social-media dust-ups are part of a business strategy:

“It seems like yelling into the chamber helps them amplify their noise.”

Emma Pettit is a staff reporter at The Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter @EmmaJanePettit, or email her at emma.pettit@chronicle.com.