NIPS, as the conference is widely known, is one of the biggest artificial intelligence (AI) conferences in the world with companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and DeepMind all attending each year. The conference, which began in 1987, focuses on advances in machine learning (ML) and computational neuroscience.
Renowned AI researchers attend the conference, which is currently debating a name change, to publish academic papers and give talks, while tech giants hunt for top AI talent, often enticing them with big salaries.
But the conference has gained in popularity over the years as AI has become the latest big thing in technology.
One Twitter user with the username Awa described the ticket sell out as "absurd," while others are talking about launching their own anti-NIPS conference in protest.
Ben Hammer, chief technology officer of data science firm Kaggle, wrote on Twitter: "Looks like NIPS 2018 may have sold out in under 15 minutes. For those debating ML hype, getting a ticket to a ML conference is now more challenging than a Taylor Swift conference or a Hamilton showing."
Google Brain researcher Nal Kalchbrenner said on Twitter:" NIPS registration just opened.... uh aaaand tickets are sold out!"
Some 2,500 tickets were sold, while between six and eight thousand tickets are being reserved for the authors of academic papers that will be unveiled at the conference.
