Tech giants team up to address the future of artificial intelligence

Some of the world's biggest tech companies are teaming up to address the future of artificial intelligence and how it will affect privacy, safety, interoperability and collaboration between people and AI. Amazon, Google's DeepMind division, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft have founded the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (PAI) to consider how and why AI developments, such as online facial recognition, might be a cause for concern. "Every new technology brings transformation, and transformation sometimes also causes fear in people who don't understand the transformation. One of the purposes of this group is really to explain and communicate the capabilities of AI, specifically the dangers and the basic ethical questions," said Yann LeCun, Facebook's director of AI. LeCun advises that the group will foster communication among those who build AI, bring in additional opinions from academia and civil society and inform the public on the progress of AI.