Amazon, FB, Microsoft, Alphabet Form AI Non-Profit

Inc. (AMZN) have come together to form a non-profit partnership for artificial intelligence. Called the "Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society," the venture is intended to promote understanding of artificial intelligence in the public domain and, also, is a means for the companies to collaborate and publish research regarding the technology under an open license. The list of topics that it intends to cover is broad and range from ethics and fairness in AI to interoperability and collaboration between people and AI systems. Tesla Motors Corp. (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk's organization OpenAI and Apple Inc. (AAPL) are notable absentees from the list of organizations in this partnership. With its Siri chatbot that assists smartphone users, Apple is an AI pioneer and is said to be ramping up its investments in this space.