After Partnership on AI issues a report condemning the use of algorithms to assess bail, only Microsoft agrees to publicly comment on it
The Partnership on AI, a trade organization founded by Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM, and Microsoft to set best-practice standards on AI research … Tweets: @davegershgorn Tweets: Dave Gershgorn / @davegershgorn : Today in tech company news:Big tech companies are condemning the use of algorithmic risk assessment scores. Only you can't know which big tech companies—they want to remain anonymous in support of this report, from an organization they founded.http://qz.com/1604954
Context & Ripple Effects
When Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM and Microsoft launched the Partnership on AI in 2016, it was pitched as a nonprofit for best practices rather than a lobbying vehicle, with Apple joining months later. The group followed up with ethical-AI principles in 2017, building its identity on collective, public standards-setting.
This bail-risk report tests that identity: the group condemns algorithmic scores used to assess defendants, but only Microsoft will say so under its own name while other founding members support it anonymously — a gap between the coalition's public-facing mission and its members' willingness to be individually accountable.
First-order effects
- Microsoft captures sole public credit for opposing algorithmic bail assessments, while the unnamed founders dilute the report's advocacy weight precisely because their support can't be verified.
Second-order effects
- The remaining founders face a credibility choice — attach their names to future Partnership positions or cede the ethics narrative to whichever member (currently Microsoft) speaks publicly; vendors selling risk-assessment tools to courts also gain an argument that even the technology's builders consider such scoring unsound.
Third-order effects
- If anonymous endorsement stays the norm, trade-group AI ethics drifts from binding standards toward optional signaling, pushing scrutiny toward individual companies' own conduct — a dynamic that resurfaces when Google, IBM and Microsoft ethics chiefs later describe rejecting client work like facial recognition (per Reuters).
The trend: AI industry self-governance is shifting from collective principle-setting by coalitions toward individual companies staking out public ethics positions their peers won't sign.