Tech Behemoths Form Artificial-Intelligence Nonprofit

A group of tech titans, including Amazon.com and Microsoft, has created a nonprofit that will ponder the impact of artificial intelligence on the world—and perhaps make it seem less threatening to worried observers.

The group, dubbed Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society, also includes Facebook, IBM and Alphabet divisions DeepMind and Google.

The move comes as these technology firms bank on artificial-intelligence applications as the next big thing, even as critics fret about automation’s potential to take jobs away from humans. The group says it will research best practices for AI applications, as well as make the field’s advantages and challenges better understood by the public.