Utter the words and the first thing many people -- if not everyone -- would think of is a "Terminator"-like sci-fi dystopia where sentient machines are hunting humans down. These misgivings about what an AI-dominated world would be like are not alleviated when the likes of Stephen Hawking warn that AI "could spell the end of the human race." Microsoft, Google, IBM, Facebook and Amazon want to change this gloomy perception. The tech giants on Wednesday announced the launch of a new non-profit organization -- the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society, or the Partnership on AI, for short -- to advance the general public's understanding of AI technologies, and debate concerns related to ethics, privacy, and transparency. "Together, the organization's members will conduct research, recommend best practices, and publish research under an open license in areas such as ethics, fairness and inclusivity; transparency, privacy, and interoperability; collaboration between people and AI systems; and the trustworthiness, reliability and robustness of the technology," the companies said in a joint statement.

Last time we investigated the k-nearest-neighbors algorithm and the underlying idea that one can learn a classification rule by copying the known classification of nearby data points. This required that we view our data as sitting inside a metric space; that is, we imposed a kind of geometric structure on our data. One glaring problem is that there may be no reasonable way to do this. While we mentioned scaling issues and provided a number of possible metrics in our primer, a more common problem is that the data simply isn't numeric. For instance, a poll of US citizens might ask the respondent to select which of a number of issues he cares most about. There could be 50 choices, and there is no reasonable way to assign these numerical values so that all are equidistant in the resulting metric space. Another issue is that the quality of the data could be bad. For instance, there may be missing values for some attributes (e.g., a respondent may neglect to answer one or more questions).

In July of 2013 Toby Shapshak, the South African speaker, strategist and editor of Stuff Magazine, did a TED talk called You Don't Need An App For That. Business leaders, innovators and experience designers would soon realize how profound this TED talk was to the rest of the world. Shapshak's astute observations and message to the rest of the world was years ahead of a revolution that Forbes would call "the new way we'll be interacting with computers." Toby's 2013 Ted talk touted that "while the rest of the world is updating statuses and playing games on smartphones, Africa is developing useful SMS-based solutions to everyday needs". Since 2013 his TED talk has been viewed 1,438,046 times as of July 19, 2016. Fast forward a couple of years and we see more apps than anyone knows what to do with, as well as a notable decrease in usage and app-downloads. This has businesses confused and frustrated.

Likewise, I am convinced that the revolution in artificial intelligence will enable computers and robots to do many of the tasks that white-collar workers now do. It's not surprising, therefore, that many people are worried about the fate of those whose jobs are vulnerable -- or have already been lost -- to the latest disruptive technology. What will happen to the millions of men and women who now drive trucks and taxis when the trucks and taxis can drive themselves? What will happen to the accountants and health workers when computers can do their jobs? Some analysts have estimated that, with many fewer employees needed to produce the current volume of goods and services, a large share of current employment could be made redundant.

In contrast to the usual approach to operating self-driving cars, we did not program any explicit object detection, mapping, path planning or control components into this car. Instead, the car learns on its own to create all necessary internal representations necessary to steer, simply by observing human drivers. Similarly, the car can drive on the road that is overgrown with grass and bushes without the need to create a vegetation detection system. All it takes is about twenty example runs driven by humans at different times of the day. Learning to drive in these complex environments demonstrates new capabilities of deep neural networks. The car also learns to generalize its driving behavior.

In 2014, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk said in an interview that he believed that AI posed the biggest threat to human existence. That didn't stop him from co-chairing a billion-dollar AI research nonprofit, but it did make people think about whether artificial intelligence could get out of hand. Now, five tech giants including Google and its DeepMind subsidiary, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM have come together to form Partnership on AI, a coalition dedicated to highlighting the best practices and ethical research in the field of artificial intelligence. This is your chance to join them. The group notes that it "foresees great societal benefits and opportunities ahead, but we also understand that as with every new technology there will be concerns and confusion associated with new applications and competencies, and we look forward to working together on these important issues. We intend to come together to address these important issues, including ethics, safety, transparency, privacy, biases, and fairness."

Partnership on AI will support related research and recommend best practices in ethics, transparency and privacy when it comes to artificial intelligence studies. The project also aims to create an open platform where researchers and major players in the industry can communicate. The initiative's website explains its tenet as follows: "We believe that artificial intelligence technologies hold great promise for raising the quality of people's lives and can be leveraged to help humanity address important global challenges such as climate change, food, inequality, health, and education." All five founding companies have huge AI projects. IBM, as you know, has Watson, while Google has DeepMind, which you probably recognize as the the team behind AlphaGo.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft are joining forces to create a new AI partnership dedicated to advancing public understanding of the sector, as well as coming up with standards for future researchers to abide by. Going by the unwieldy name of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society, the alliance isn't a lobbying organisation (at least, it says it "does not intend" to lobby government bodies). Instead, it says it will "conduct research, recommend best practices, and publish research under an open license in areas such as ethics, fairness and inclusivity; transparency, privacy, and interoperability; collaboration between people and AI systems; and the trustworthiness, reliability and robustness of the technology". There will be equal representation between corporate and non-corporate members on the board of the partnership, and it hopes to invite "academics, non-profits and specialists in policy and ethics" to join. Each of the five founding corporate members has strong AI research teams, some of which have become household names, such as IBM's Watson and Amazon's Alexa.

Amazon, DeepMind/Google, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft today announced that they will create a non-profit organization that will work to advance public understanding of artificial intelligence technologies (AI) and formulate best practices on the challenges and opportunities within the field. Academics, non-profits, and specialists in policy and ethics will be invited to join the Board of the organization, named the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society (Partnership on AI). The objective of the Partnership on AI is to address opportunities and challenges with AI technologies to benefit people and society. Together, the organization's members will conduct research, recommend best practices, and publish research under an open license in areas such as ethics, fairness, and inclusivity; transparency, privacy, and interoperability; collaboration between people and AI systems; and the trustworthiness, reliability, and robustness of the technology. It does not intend to lobby government or other policymaking bodies.

Five of the biggest tech companies have launched a collaboration to help the public understand the benefits of artificial intelligence. The New York Times reported in early September that Google, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM and Amazon had been meeting to discuss an AI-related project. Their collaboration is officially called "Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society," and it has a few goals other than to make sure people know that AI research isn't all about creating killer robots. Partnership on AI will support related research and recommend best practices in ethics, transparency and privacy when it comes to artificial intelligence studies. The project also aims to create an open platform where researchers and major players in the industry can communicate.