Let's face it: artificial intelligence is scary. After decades of dystopian science fiction novels and movies where sentient machines end up turning on humanity, we can't help but worry as real world AI continues to improve at such a rapid rate. Sure, that danger is probably decades away if it's even a real danger at all. But there are many more immediate concerns. Will automated robots cost us jobs? Will online face recognition destroy our privacy? Will self-driving cars mess with moral decision making?

The good news is that many of the tech giants behind the new wave of AI are well aware that it scares people—and that these fears must be addressed. That's why Amazon, Facebook, Google's DeepMind division, IBM, and Microsoft have founded a new organization called the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society.

"Every new technology brings transformation, and transformation sometimes also causes fear in people who don't understand the transformation," Facebook's director of AI Yann LeCun said this morning during a press briefing dedicated to the new project. "One of the purposes of this group is really to explain and communicate the capabilities of AI, specifically the dangers and the basic ethical questions."

If all that sounds familiar, that's because Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk had been harping on this issue for years, and last December, he and others founded a an organization, OpenAI, that aims to address many of the same fears. But OpenAI is fundamentally a R&D outfit. The Partnership for AI is something different. It's a consortium—open to anyone—that seeks facilitate a much wider dialogue about the nature, purpose, and consequences of artificial intelligence.

According to LeCun, the group will operate in three fundamental ways. It will foster communication among those who build AI. It will rope in additional opinions from academia and civil society—people will a wider perspective on how AI will effect society as a whole. And it will inform the public om the progress of AI. That may include educating lawmakers, but the organization says it will not lobby the government.