Consortium targets artificial intelligence

Partnership to consider issues such as ethics, privacy, transparency

Some of the top names in tech have formed a consortium aimed at fostering the promise of artificial intelligence while keeping its less savoury side-effects in check.

Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Google and Facebook announced Thursday the formation of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society. Noticeably absent as founding members are companies such as Apple and Tesla.

“We look forward to working arm-in-arm on best practices and on such important topics as ethics, privacy, transparency, bias, inclusiveness, and safety,” Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft Research, said in a statement.

Ralf Herbrich, director of machine learning science at Amazon, said that while the industry is in an AI “golden age, we are still a long way from being able to do things the way humans do things . ... This partnership will ensure we’re including the best and the brightest in this space in the conversation to improve customer trust and benefit society.”

The Partnership’s website features a mission statement that focuses on supporting AI best practices, collaboration between people and AI systems, and ensuring the trustworthiness, reliability and robustness of the technology.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has moved quickly from being the name of a 2001 sci-fi film by Steven Spielberg to an increasingly commonplace technology that consumers interact with when they use voice recognition systems such as Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana or music services such as Pandora and Spotify.

Google uses AI to power its new Allo messaging app; IBM has deep-thinking Watson; and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is building his own at-home AI-based assistant.

Although Apple has been vocal of late about the importance of AI and CEO Tim Cook has staked his leadership on big societal issues ranging from privacy to LBGTQ issues, it did not join the new Partnership.

AI is anchored to the exponential boom in computing power and the cloud, which combine to give companies machine-learning capabilities that can power everything from predictive consumer experiences to self-driving cars that learn from their mistakes.