On October 24, the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) released a set of policy principles to guide the technology industry and governments in their approach to artificial intelligence (AI). The organization—which includes Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel, and Microsoft—intends for its guidelines to help AI meet its potential to solve important problems while minimizing any harmful consequences.

The report presents separate recommendations for members of the technology industry, government, and public-private partnerships:

• Technology Industry: The policy principles state that the technology industry has an obligation to minimize the risks AI presents, including mitigating harmful biases that may arise from AI data. The report emphasizes the need to design safe AI systems and prevent misuse. It also places importance on high security standards to ensure the public remains willing to share sensitive data. The council highlighted its support for voluntary, consensus-based standards and best practices for AI industry members.
• Government: To facilitate further AI innovation, the council urged governments to continue offering funding and incentives for “long-term, high-risk” research in fields such as robotics, human augmentation, and data analytics. The group also suggested that lawmakers limit regulation of AI to avoid unintentionally impeding industry growth. Noting the danger of a one-size-fits-all policy, the council requested that governments customize any laws, regulations, or taxes for the particularities of a given AI application. The ITI expressed its support for protecting intellectual property rights for AI systems by all available means, including trade agreements. In addition, the principles recognize the importance of dependable cybersecurity and privacy provisions for AI to thrive and endorse government use of broadly-accepted and deployed security standards.
• Public-Private Partnerships: ITI member companies encouraged greater use of public-private partnerships (PPP) engaging industry, academic institutions, and governments in addressing AI’s societal impacts. The group recommends cross-sector collaboration to promote science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and to help workers adapt to job changes, losses, or worker displacement that may result from greater reliance on AI. The guidelines propose that PPPs work to broaden access to resources necessary for AI use and development with the goal of more fairly distributing access to opportunities created by these technologies.