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from the do-you-want-skynet?-This-is-how-you-get-skynet dept.
The European Patent Office has rejected two patent applications filed on behalf of an AI by researchers. The AI is named DABUS ('device for the autonomous bootstrapping of unified sentience'),
DABUS created two unique, usable ideas that were submitted to [the] patent office: the first was a new kind of beverage container; and the second was a signal device to help search and rescue teams locate a target.
One of the researchers, Ryan Abbot of the University of Surrey, argues that this should have been handled differently
'If I teach my Ph.D. student that and they go on to make a final complex idea, that doesn't make me an inventor on their patent, so it shouldn't with a machine,' he said in October.
He believes the best approach would be to credit the AI as the inventor of the patents, and then credit the AI's human owner as the assignee given license to make decisions about the patent or draw benefit from it.
The EPO rejected the patent applications on the grounds that "there was no human inventor." This is a constraint built into European Copyright law, but until now not part of European Patent law.
Also at Techdirt
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday January 10 2020, @03:56PM (1 child)
Yes, probably AI will soon exceed our own inventiveness. I couldn't guess whether that's 20 years or 100 years out, but it's coming. For decades now, we've been using computers as engines to perform searches that would be impractical for humans to do. For instance, the amount of calculating that must be done to check for new Mersenne primes is incredible. Multi-million digit numbers operated on tens of millions of times, to do just one primality test. Not only is that beyond the capacity of an army of humans using pencil and paper, not even computers of the 1960s can do that. As another example, the Planet 9 hypothesis is very much a product of current computational ability. Without computers to do the sheer quantity of math required to run thousands of simulations of the solar system, it would not be possible to achieve our current understanding of solar system dynamics. Yet another marvel of computational power is the search engine.
And that's just Von Neumann machines. Quantum computing gets most of the attention, but neural net computing is the big breakthrough of the past decade. Internet search engines are essentially still unintelligent, being at the root very, very, very fast, but dumb string finders.
Patents were supposed to encourage going public with inventions, rather than keeping them secret. In exchange for going public, the inventor is rewarded with exclusivity. There are a bunch of flawed assumptions in the whole idea, chief of which is the romantic notion that each individual is potentially so unique and special that one among us really could come up with an idea no one else is capable of inventing. It plays to Western society's notions of rugged individualism, and to the irrationally inflated fears of loss. People will hoard ideas as if they're gold. I am of the opinion that patents should be abolished altogether. Not just software patents. All of them. But because of the emotional buttons they push, I don't see it happening for a long while yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10 2020, @11:18PM
IP won't be abolished because it is pushed for by big corporate interests with deep pockets.
That's not to say that all IP is bad though. I do agree that IP for inventions and 'novel ideas' is generally bad. The idea that one special person can come up with an idea or invention that no one else would think of (for 20 years) if the need arises is silly.
However the justification for IP where a lot of expensive R&D is needed first might be a different story. Things like clinical trials where the results aren't a product of a thought experiment or a long chain of math computations is something that requires an investment to develop. I'm not saying that the need for IP isn't exaggerated or that there aren't conflicts of interest that may skew researchers to conduct their research in less than optimal directions (ie: in favor of that which can be patented instead of what can't be patented or perhaps even trying to suppress research on things that can't be patented or to suppress the results) just that if used properly there are possible situations where IP can be useful.