Tech giant Apple is reportedly planning to join the Partnership on AI, an industry group aimed at studying and formulating best practices for artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
Apple would be joining other technology companies in the group, including Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft. Although an announcement is expected as soon as this week, neither Apple nor the partnership has issued any official comment on the move.
Forced To Play Nice
In some ways, joining the consortium would be a logical step for the company. Apple has become a major player in AI technology in recent years with the development of Siri, its natural language personal assistant.
On the other hand, Apple is famous for the secrecy it maintains surrounding its major initiatives, including AI. Until recently, Apple researchers working on AI were even discouraged from publishing their findings. Joining the partnership would represent something of a change in strategy for a company that has long paved its own path with regard to industry standards and technologies.
But while Apple has been an early mover in artificial intelligence, it may be starting to feel pressure from competitors as more tech companies have jumped into the pool. Microsoft now has its own Cortana personal assistant, while Amazon has launched the Alexa platform.
With so many of its competitors working together in the consortium, Apple has been on the outside looking in. That might have served the company in the past when it was willing to develop its own standards with little concern for interoperability with other technologies.
But with companies, such as IBM and Facebook, sharing massive data sets to accelerate the development of their own AI platforms, Apple may now feel it has little choice but to play nice with those organizations.
Research into Ethics and Best Practices
According to the Partnership for AI’s…