Apple Finally Joins The Artificial Intelligence A-Team Along With Google, Facebook, And Microsoft

It’s likely that nothing underscores the importance of artificial intelligence more than the alliance that major tech companies are forming. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, and IBM are usually competitors in one way or another, but they still formed the group called Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society. Now, Apple can be counted as one of their numbers.

According to the group’s blog post on the matter, the initiative has been getting a lot of support from the AI community since it was announced in September last year. Now, the iPhone maker is finally a formal member of the alliance. In addition, the post also notes the introduction of the Board of Trustees, which counts several new members.

“Today, we are announcing the inaugural Board of Trustees, the board that oversees the Partnership on AI,” the post reads. “First, we’re excited to welcome six new Independent board members. These new members are Dario Amodei (OpenAI), Subbarao Kambhampati (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence & ASU), Deirdre Mulligan (UC Berkeley), Carol Rose (American Civil Liberties Union), Eric Sears (MacArthur Foundation), and Jason Furman (Peterson Institute of International Economics).”

Now, it’s worth keeping in mind that at this point, the goals of the group remains vague. As Tech Crunch notes, the Partnership on AI has yet to provide the world with specifics on the areas that it will be working on. This is understandable since the group was just formed several months ago and is still welcoming members.

With that being the case, creating a standard of the practice of creating AI and cooperating on the development of the technology can mean anything. The group is set to have a formal meeting on February 3rd, at which time, perhaps they will finally come to an agreement with regards to specifics.