John Markoff

[Commentary] Yes, I’m retiring from the New York Times. I’m certain that when the next corrupt president is impeached it will be because of the hard work and persistence of some new Woodward and Bernstein. Most of you know that before I became a reporter I was a political activist. I was part of a generation that was radicalized by the war in Vietnam.

At some point in the late 1970s I realized that I’d missed the memo and the movement I thought I was part of was no longer. No longer being a True Believer was good training for being a reporter. Fake news will come and go, but an independent press will always be the bedrock of a democracy.

[John Markoff is a former science writer for the New York Times]

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 AI 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 AI on jobs, transportation and even warfare. Tech companies have long overpromised what artificially intelligent machines can do. In recent years, however, the AI 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 AI 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.