Google, Amazon, IBM mull AI ethics
Five major technology companies are considering an ethics standard for artificial intelligence (AI). Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, IBM and Google's parent company, Alphabet, have met to discuss the impact of AI on issues such as jobs, transportation and warfare. The details of what will result from the industry partnership are unclear as yet, but it is thought that devising a framework for self-policing in the industry now might diffuse the potential threat of regulators creating their own rules for AI. The five companies have tentative plans to announce a new organisation in mid-September.
SAN FRANCISCO — For years, science-fiction moviemakers have been making us fear the bad things that artificially intelligent machines might do to their human creators. But for the next decade or two, our biggest concern is more likely to be that robots will take away our jobs or bump into us on the highway.

Now five of the world’s largest tech companies are trying to create a standard of ethics around the creation of artificial intelligence. While science fiction has focused on the existential threat of A.I. to humans, researchers at Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and those from Amazon, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft have been meeting to discuss more tangible issues, such as the impact of A.I. on jobs, transportation and even warfare.

Tech companies have long overpromised what artificially intelligent machines can do. In recent years, however, the A.I. field has made rapid advances in a range of areas, from self-driving cars and machines that understand speech, like Amazon’s Echo device, to a new generation of weapons systems that threaten to automate combat.

The specifics of what the industry group will do or say — even its name — have yet to be hashed out. But the basic intention is clear: to ensure that A.I. research is focused on benefiting people, not hurting them, according to four people involved in the creation of the industry partnership who are not authorized to speak about it publicly.