While Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) have reportedly not confirmed their positions on whether they would be part of the incoming Trump administration’s building of a national registry of Muslims, surprisingly, Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) did not beat around the bush. Its spokesman categorically said that the company would not collaborate.
It is somewhat astonishing how Apple did not provide a reply to the inquiry yet it has had a long legal battle against the FBI over its provision of tools to access an iPhone used by a terrorist attacker.
Could the hesitancy by the companies be an index of the political landscape?
All throughout his campaigns, President-Elect Donald Trump talked about immigrants, particularly from Muslim countries. Together with his team, he intends to create a registry of Muslim citizens. The database is likely to be subjected to cross-examinations and other forms of monitoring. This is expected to occasion a large political landscape given that different firms have different opinions while seem to be changing their earlier positions. Take for example Google, which has forever held onto the motto “Don’t Be Evil” that has been taken to mean a way of acting responsibly.
Nonetheless, how this system will work and the management of the harvested information is still a mystery. While many of the tech firms are pointing out on security, it remains to be seen how the government will embrace the tech industry.
But the tech giants have a new partnership
As all this goes down, five tech firms have launched a Partnership on Artificial Intelligence. The collaboration by Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Facebook, Google, IBM, and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) will endeavor to carry out a research and suggest best practices relating to ethics of the industry.
The partnership comes at a time when technological progress and optimism about AI has been expanding. Its members have also been competing with one another in categories of consumer electronics and business productivity software. There is also a burgeoning investment in AI-focused startups.
The director of machine learning at Amazon, Ralf Herbrich says, “This partnership will ensure we’re including the best and the brightest in this space in the conversation to improve customer trust and benefit society.”
Meanwhile, Twitter’s stock was trading at $17.93 a fall of $0.10 or 0.55%