SAN FRANCISCO, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Stanford University on Monday launched a new institute with the aim of advancing AI technologies and applications while ensuring AI developments benefit humanity.

The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (Stanford HAI) is built upon the university's AI laboratory, and commits to advance AI research, education, policy, and practice to improve the human condition.

"AI is advancing by leaps and bounds. Many of us are using AI every day in our workplaces and our homes. It's becoming a fabric of everyday life in a way we couldn't have imagined a few years ago," said Marc Tessier-Lavigne, president of Stanford University, at the launching event.

He also noted that it's only a beginning of transformation how people are going to live their life.

"The pace of technology development is quickening and speeding up even more, and the pace is impacting human society more profoundly than ever before," he told an audience of hundreds of people, including academia, industry leaders as well as the general public.

While acknowledging that AI has the potential of changing society in so many ways -- from promising medical applications to vastly safer cars, Tessier-Lavigne said the advance of AI also carries a risk, from job security and AI generated content on social media to the potential of machine learning bias.

"Now is a moment to ensure we are embarking on a path to develop technology that will serve, augment, and complement humanity, not replace or divide it," he said.

The new institute is founded on the beliefs that AI should be inspired by human intelligence, but that development should be guided by human impact, he said.

Citing the three principles of the institute, Fei-Fei Li, a famed Chinese American AI researcher and co-director of the Stanford HAI, said the development of AI should be guided by a concern for its impact on human society, and it should improve human skills, instead of replacing them.

AI development should incorporate more of the versatility, nuance, and depth of human intellect, said Li.

The university also held an inaugural symposium on Monday, gathering big minds in the area to share their views on mitigating the risks and increasing the promise of AI.

Stanford University was ranked the third in the list of the best U.S. graduate schools for AI by U.S. News and World Report in 2018, following Carnegie Mellon University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.