Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft have come together to announce a new partnership which will oversee the development of artificial intelligence.
If you entertain daydreams of the event when our AI overlords take over in the near future, you can thank Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft for averting that reality; five of the major tech companies today have announced a new ‘Partnership on AI’.
As one can imagine, the development of an artificial intelligence is an ethical, moral, legal, and developmental minefield – and so five of the major players in the technology world have come together to oversee research and promote the best practices as the development of artificial intelligence continues.
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The partnership will formally open the door between each company to discuss advancements in AI research; a surprising but much-needed announcement considering that each company’s teams remain in staunch competition with one another.
All five major companies have announced their intent to fund research, while in the near future membership and involvement in the partnership will increase as activists, nonprofits, ethicists, and other stakeholders join the fray. The organizational structure of the partnership places equal say in the hands of non-corporate entities as it does major conglomerates.
The Partnership on AI -rather than limit the endeavour and progress of research initiatives to a company boardroom – will publish research on ethics, inclusivity, and privacy on a standard open license.
Speaking on the announcement, Francesca Rossi, an AI ethics researcher at IBM research, cited that “œThe power of AI is in the enterprise sector… For society at-large to get the benefits of AI, we first have to trust it.“
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The announcement is a refreshing change to the paradigm in which fears of that developing an artificial intelligence could render humankind obsolete; the partnership intends to make the minutes of its meetings public, ensuring that a forum for discussing research and the ethics of AI research remains intact.
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