In support of our mission to benefit people and society, the Partnership on AI conducts research, organizes discussions, shares insights, provides thought leadership, consults with relevant third parties, responds to questions from the public and media, and creates educational material that advances the understanding of AI technologies including machine perception, learning, and automated reasoning.
Support research, discussions, identification, sharing, and recommendation of best practices in the research, development, testing, and fielding of AI technologies. Address such areas as fairness and inclusivity, explanation and transparency, security and privacy, values and ethics, collaboration between people and AI systems, interoperability of systems, and of the trustworthiness, reliability, containment, safety, and robustness of the technology.
Advance wider public understanding and awareness of AI by sharing insights into AI’s core technologies, potential benefits – and costs. We will act as a trusted experts on AI for society and their leaders, and will work to increase public understanding of how AI is progressing.
Create and support opportunities for AI researchers and key stakeholders, including people in technology, law, policy, government, civil liberties, and the greater public, to communicate directly and openly with each other about relevant issues to AI and its influences on people and society. Ensure that key stakeholders have the knowledge, resources, and overall capacity to participate fully.
Seek out, support, celebrate, and highlight aspirational efforts in AI for socially benevolent applications. Identify areas of untapped opportunity, including promising technologies and applications not being explored by academia and industry R&D.
Advances in AI have the potential to improve outcomes, enhance quality, and reduce costs in such safety-critical areas as healthcare and transportation. Effective and careful applications of pattern recognition, automated decision making, and robotic systems show promise for enhancing the quality of life and preventing thousands of needless deaths.
However, where AI tools are used to supplement or replace human decision-making, we must be sure that they are safe, trustworthy, and aligned with the ethics and preferences of people who are influenced by their actions.
We will pursue studies and best practices around the fielding of AI in safety-critical application areas.
AI has the potential to provide societal value by recognizing patterns and drawing inferences from large amounts of data. Data can be harnessed to develop useful diagnostic systems and recommendation engines, and to support people in making breakthroughs in such areas as biomedicine, public health, safety, criminal justice, education, and sustainability.
While such results promise to provide real benefits, we need to be sensitive to the possibility that there are hidden assumptions and biases in data, and therefore in the systems built from that data — in addition to a wide range of other system choices which can be impacted by biases, assumptions, and limits. This can lead to actions and recommendations that replicate those biases, and have serious blind spots.
Researchers, officials, and the public should be sensitive to these possibilities and we should seek to develop methods that detect and correct those errors and biases, not replicate them. We also need to work to develop systems that can explain the rationale for inferences.
We will pursue opportunities to develop best practices around the development and fielding of fair, explainable, and accountable AI systems.
AI advances will undoubtedly have multiple influences on the distribution of jobs and nature of work. While advances promise to inject great value into the economy, they can also be the source of disruptions as new kinds of work are created and other types of work become less needed due to automation.
Discussions are rising on the best approaches to minimizing potential disruptions, making sure that the fruits of AI advances are widely shared and competition and innovation are encouraged and not stifled. We seek to study and understand best paths forward, and play a role in this discussion.
A promising area of AI is the design of systems that augment the perception, cognition, and problem-solving abilities of people. Examples include the use of AI technologies to help physicians make more timely and accurate diagnoses and assistance provided to drivers of cars to help them to avoid dangerous situations and crashes.
Opportunities for R&D and for the development of best practices on AI-human collaboration include methods that provide people with clarity about the understandings and confidence that AI systems have about situations, means for coordinating human and AI contributions to problem solving, and enabling AI systems to work with people to resolve uncertainties about human goals.
AI advances will touch people and society in numerous ways, including potential influences on privacy, democracy, criminal justice, and human rights. For example, while technologies that personalize information and that assist people with recommendations can provide people with valuable assistance, they could also inadvertently or deliberately manipulate people and influence opinions.
We seek to promote thoughtful collaboration and open dialogue about the potential subtle and salient influences of AI on people and society.
AI offers great potential for promoting the public good, for example in the realms of education, housing, public health, and sustainability. We see great value in collaborating with public and private organizations, including academia, scientific societies, NGOs, social entrepreneurs, and interested private citizens to promote discussions and catalyze efforts to address society’s most pressing challenges.
Some of these projects may address deep societal challenges and will be moonshots – ambitious big bets that could have far-reaching impacts. Others may be creative ideas that could quickly produce positive results by harnessing AI advances.
The regular engagement of experts across multiple disciplines (including but not limited to psychology, philosophy, economics, finance, sociology, public policy, and law) to discuss and provide guidance on emerging issues related to the impact of AI on society.
The engagement of AI users and developers, as well as representatives of industry sectors that may be impacted by AI (such as healthcare, financial services, transportation, commerce, manufacturing, telecommunications, and media) to support best practices in the research, development, and use of AI technology within specific domains.
The design, execution, and financial support of objective third-party studies on best practices for the ethics, safety, fairness, inclusiveness, trust, and robustness for AI research, applications, and services. The identification and celebration of important work in these fields. The support of aspirational projects in AI that would greatly benefit people and society.
The development of informational materials on the current and future likely trajectories of research and development in core AI and related disciplines.
The Partnership on AI (PAI) is a multistakeholder organization that brings together academics, researchers, civil society organizations, companies building and utilizing AI technology, and other groups working to better understand AI’s impacts. The Partnership was established to study and formulate best practices on AI technologies, to advance the public’s understanding of AI, and to serve as an open platform for discussion and engagement about AI and its influences on people and society.
The Partnership was formally established in late 2016, led by a group of AI researchers representing six of the world’s largest technology companies: Apple, Amazon, DeepMind and Google, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft. In 2017 the addition of six not-for-profit Board members expanded the Partnership into a multi-stakeholder organization – which now represents a community of 50+ member organizations. Read the letter from our Founding Co-Chairs here.
Rebecca Finlay is the Acting Executive Director at the Partnership on AI overseeing the organization’s mission and strategy. In this role, Rebecca ensures that the PAI Team and our global community of Partners work together so that developments in AI advance positive outcomes for people and society. She continues her role on the Board of Directors, while taking on this additional responsibility.
The goals of the Partnership are four-fold:
First, to develop and share best-practice methods and approaches in the research, development, testing, and fielding of AI technologies;
Second, to advance public understanding of AI across varied constituencies, including on core technologies, potential benefits, and costs;
Third, to provide an open and inclusive platform for discussion and engagement on the future of AI, and to ensure that key stakeholders have the knowledge, resources, and overall capacity to participate fully in these important conversations; and
Fourth, to identify and foster aspirational efforts in AI for socially benevolent applications.
Our Partner community contributes deeply to shaping and achieving these objectives.
PAI is not a lobbying organization. We do, however, intend to be a resource to policymakers when relevant and possible — for instance, in conducting research that informs AI best practices and exploring the societal consequences of certain AI systems, as well as policies around the development and use of AI systems.
The Partnership on AI (PAI) is a multistakeholder organization that brings together academics, researchers, civil society organizations, companies building and utilizing AI technology, and other groups working to better understand AI’s impacts. The Partnership was established to study and formulate best practices on AI technologies, to advance the public’s understanding of AI, and to serve as an open platform for discussion and engagement about AI and its influences on people and society.
The Partnership was formally established in late 2016, led by a group of AI researchers representing six of the world’s largest technology companies: Apple, Amazon, DeepMind and Google, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft. In 2017 the addition of six not-for-profit Board members expanded the Partnership into a multi-stakeholder organization – which now represents a community of 50+ member organizations. Read the letter from our Founding Co-Chairs here.
Rebecca Finlay is the Acting Executive Director at the Partnership on AI overseeing the organization’s mission and strategy. In this role, Rebecca ensures that the PAI Team and our global community of Partners work together so that developments in AI advance positive outcomes for people and society. She continues her role on the Board of Directors, while taking on this additional responsibility.
The goals of the Partnership are four-fold:
First, to develop and share best-practice methods and approaches in the research, development, testing, and fielding of AI technologies;
Second, to advance public understanding of AI across varied constituencies, including on core technologies, potential benefits, and costs;
Third, to provide an open and inclusive platform for discussion and engagement on the future of AI, and to ensure that key stakeholders have the knowledge, resources, and overall capacity to participate fully in these important conversations; and
Fourth, to identify and foster aspirational efforts in AI for socially benevolent applications.
Our Partner community contributes deeply to shaping and achieving these objectives.
PAI is not a lobbying organization. We do, however, intend to be a resource to policymakers when relevant and possible — for instance, in conducting research that informs AI best practices and exploring the societal consequences of certain AI systems, as well as policies around the development and use of AI systems.
The activities of the Partnership on AI are funded by charitable contributions in the form of membership dues paid by its for-profit Partners and contributions and grants from foundations.
Artificial intelligence technologies hold significant promise for raising the quality of people’s lives across the world. However, with technological development comes new concerns and challenges associated with the responsible development and the effects of AI, including the safety and trustworthiness of AI technologies, the fairness and transparency of systems, and the intentional as well as inadvertent influences of AI on people and society.
Our thematic pillars illustrate a set of issues where PAI sees some of the greatest risks and opportunities for AI. A central goal of PAI, building upon the issues enumerated in these pillars, is to ensure that the benefits of AI are distributed as broadly as possible, and that the challenges associated with AI are understood and addressed.