Apple Inc. hasn’t been as quick to embrace the open-source artificial intelligence community as some of its fellow tech giants, but it’s starting to make up for lost time.

The iPhone maker this morning became the sixth founding member of the much-touted Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society. Apple joins inaugural backers Amazon.com Inc., IBM Corp., Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc., which is represented in the consortium by its Britain-based DeepMind research division. The five companies started the group in September with the straightforward but ambitious goal of advancing artificial intelligence.

It’s one of several non-profit institutions that are working towards this objective. In 2015, Elon Musk launched OpenAI with support from several other Silicon Valley billionaires to “ensure AI’s benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible.” Their initiative was preceded by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a 4,000-member academic group that traces its roots to the 1970s.

The Partnership on AI sets itself apart by emphasizing the creation of ethical boundaries for artificial intelligence systems. With Apple’s newly secured support, the group will work to find ways of ensuring that the technology operate reliably in situations where there may be potential for abuse. The iPhone maker could bring a lot to the table.

As one of the world’s largest consumer technology companies, Apple is in a leading position to shape how people interact with artificial intelligence. It has already helped advance the technology’s adoption a great deal with Siri and continues to bring more people aboard the bandwagon every day. From a certain standpoint, the fact that the virtual assistant has become so ubiquitous is by itself a valid reason to give Apple a voice in the discussion.

The company’s newly bestowed member status will come with several responsibilities. In its September launch announcement, the Partnership on AI said founding backers are expected to “each contribute financial and research resources” to the effort. It has apparently been actively collaborating with the consortium since its inception but sealed the relationship only today.  

In exchange for its backing, Apple has been given the right to appoint one of its employees to the Partnership on AI’s newly inaugurated Board of Trustees. The company’s pick for the role is Siri co-creator Tom Gruber. He will work alongside peers from the group’s five other founding backers along with six independent members representing OpenAI, the American Civil Liberties Union and a number of academic groups.

Image courtesy of Partnership on AI