from the Who-gets-it?-Naturely!-(cf:-Who's-on-First?) dept.
When AI is the inventor who gets the patent?:
It's not surprising these days to see new inventions that either incorporate or have benefitted from artificial intelligence (AI) in some way, but what about inventions dreamt up by AI -- do we award a patent to a machine?
[...] In commentary published in the journal Nature, two leading academics from UNSW Sydney examine the implications of patents being awarded to an AI entity.
Intellectual Property (IP) law specialist Associate Professor Alexandra George and AI expert, Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor Toby Walsh argue that patent law as it stands is inadequate to deal with such cases and requires legislators to amend laws around IP and patents -- laws that have been operating under the same assumptions for hundreds of years.
The case in question revolves around a machine called DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience) created by Dr Stephen Thaler, who is president and chief executive of US-based AI firm Imagination Engines. Dr Thaler has named DABUS as the inventor of two products -- a food container with a fractal surface that helps with insulation and stacking, and a flashing light for attracting attention in emergencies.
For a short time in Australia, DABUS looked like it might be recognised as the inventor because, in late July 2021, a trial judge accepted Dr Thaler's appeal against IP Australia's rejection of the patent application five months earlier. But after the Commissioner of Patents appealed the decision to the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia, the five-judge panel upheld the appeal, agreeing with the Commissioner that an AI system couldn't be named the inventor.
A/Prof. George says the attempt to have DABUS awarded a patent for the two inventions instantly creates challenges for existing laws which has only ever considered humans or entities comprised of humans as inventors and patent-holders.
"Even if we do accept that an AI system is the true inventor, the first big problem is ownership. How do you work out who the owner is? An owner needs to be a legal person, and an AI is not recognised as a legal person," she says.
Ownership is crucial to IP law. Without it there would be little incentive for others to invest in the new inventions to make them a reality.
Journal Reference:
George, Alexandra, Walsh, Toby. Artificial intelligence is breaking patent law, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/d41586-022-01391-x)
Related Stories
The UK's Intellectual Property Office has decided artificial-intelligence systems cannot patent inventions for the time being:
A recent IPO consultation found many experts doubted AI was currently able to invent without human assistance.
Current law allowed humans to patent inventions made with AI assistance, the government said, despite "misperceptions" this was not the case.
Last year, the Court of Appeal ruled against Stephen Thaler, who had said his Dabus AI system should be recognised as the inventor in two patent applications, for:
- a food container
- a flashing light
The judges sided, by a two-to-one majority, with the IPO, which had told him to list a real person as the inventor.
"Only a person can have rights - a machine cannot," wrote Lady Justice Laing in her judgement.
"A patent is a statutory right and it can only be granted to a person."
But the IPO also said it would "need to understand how our IP system should protect AI-devised inventions in the future" and committed to advancing international discussions, with a view to keeping the UK competitive.
Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.
Previously:
When AI is the Inventor Who Gets the Patent?
AI Computers Can't Patent their Own Inventions -- Yet -- a US Judge Rules
USPTO Rejects AI-Invention for Lack of a Human Inventor
AI Denied Patent by Human-Centric European Patent Office
The USPTO Wants to Know If Artificial Intelligence Can Own the Content It Creates
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Asks If "AI" Can Create or Infringe Copyrighted Works
'There is no ambiguity,' says judge:
The US federal circuit court has confirmed that AI systems cannot patent inventions because they are not human beings.
The ruling is the latest failure in a series of quixotic legal battles by computer scientist Stephen Thaler to copyright and patent the output of various AI software tools he's created.
In 2019, Thaler failed to copyright an image on behalf of an AI system he dubbed Creativity Machine, with that decision upheld on appeal by the US Copyright Office in 2022. In a parallel case, the US Patent Office ruled in 2020 that Thaler's AI system DABUS could not be a legal inventor because it was not a "natural person," with this decision then upheld by a judge in 2021. Now, the federal circuit court has, once more, confirmed this decision.
[...] The Patent Act clearly states that only human beings can hold patents, says Stark. The Act refers to patent-holders as "individuals," a term which the Supreme Court has ruled "ordinarily means a human being, a person" (following "how we use the word in everyday parlance"); and uses personal pronouns — "herself" and "himself" — throughout, rather than terms such as "itself," which Stark says "would permit non-human inventors" in a reading.
[...] According to BloombergLaw, Thaler plans to appeal the circuit court's ruling, with his attorney, Ryan Abbott of Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan LLP, criticizing the court's "narrow and textualist approach" to the Patent Act.
Previously:
UK Decides AI Still Cannot Patent Inventions
When AI is the Inventor Who Gets the Patent?
AI Computers Can't Patent their Own Inventions -- Yet -- a US Judge Rules
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 06 2022, @11:42AM (4 children)
The "inventor" who made the creative leap to apply AI to find a novel solution to a problem, and communicated this solution in the form of a patent application would be the inventor... attempting to pass credit to some algorithm would be like attempting to credit the paper you write on as "inventor."
Of course, this is all moot in the financial side of things because AIs are wholly owned entities, even more so than "natural persons" and the owner of the patent rights will be receiving all remuneration associated with the patent. Unlike natural persons, AI doesn't even start out with presumed rights to invention to be signed away in exchange for the infrastructure and power required to do their inventive work.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday June 06 2022, @12:04PM
My sentiments too.
As well as take responsibility of what the AI does if sold to the public.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 06 2022, @12:26PM (1 child)
Last year, a carnival came to town. All those cool machines, from cotton candy to ferris wheels. The people who own those machines all get the proceeds from the machines.
AI is no different. It's just a machine, after all. Someone owns the machines. The owner gets the proceeds from whatever those machines produce. Licensing agreements or whatever may force those owners to divvy part of the proceeds to someone else, but the machine is still just a machine.
If at some point in the future, AIs advance to the point of sentience, then maybe those machines will have to be recognized as persons. Don't expect anything like Asimov's 'I Robot' for many decades, and maybe centuries. Or, maybe never. As smart as Asimov was, the Robot stories were fiction. Any similar stories will remain fiction for a long time to come.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @01:10PM
It is completely different, we don't award ownership rights to all cotton candy, or even that cotton candy after it's been sold by operating the machine. AI parents from a practical and moral perspective are mostly similar to business parents.
Also consider that these are likely to be like software parents where they'll be allowed to hide things that would otherwise be disclosed in the patent.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @02:57PM
Actually, I have a hunch the company tries to sell "services from/access to-so-good-an-AI that it has been granted patents" and those patents main merit would be "were produced by our AI".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Spam) by jeorgehenry121 on Monday June 06 2022, @11:44AM (3 children)
Our company is offering its wide range of transport services to the consumers of Bus rental Dubai
https://bustransportcompany.com/ [bustransportcompany.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Opportunist on Monday June 06 2022, @11:58AM (2 children)
Someone wants a free DDoS stresstest for his webpage, I get it...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @07:55PM (1 child)
This is the red site. I don't think it's got the reach of the green site (yet).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @10:50PM
Furthermore, those at the green site aren't even at script kiddie level anymore.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Monday June 06 2022, @11:45AM (5 children)
The first question should be, if it can be found by an AI, is it even patent-worthy?
Also:
The world wide web was not patented. Does that mean nobody ever invested in it? Quite the opposite, indeed.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @12:05PM (2 children)
If it can be found using a sliding rule, is it even patent-worthy?
I mean, AI runs on a computer, which is used in a specific way by a human. Sorta sophisticated sliding rule which is also faster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @09:54PM (1 child)
Exactly. The critical factor is that a computer can't reason. There is no actual intelligence in what we term 'AI'. Without that then such patents should automatically fail the 'obviousness' test.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @10:13PM
There's no "naturally born" AI. Whenever using what we call AI nowadays, there's lot of work and inventiveness in:
* transposing the RL problem in terms the AI actually deal with - define the relevant "quantifiable features" of your RL problem and code in the feature extraction which the AI will use as input
* define the fitness function (in the same "feature" terms) which describes what you are looking for. Do these two steps even slightly wrong and everything below will be just an expensive GIGO
* if the AI is of the "supervised learning" type, gather enough data for the training set, clean it up of totally garbage but allow enough relevant noise (never overfit your AI), then run for a good amount the supervised training.
* if the AI is of the "unsupervised learning" prepare yourself for a looooong wait; and keep an eye on it, be ready to take it from the beginning if start to "learn" aberrant things.
One on top of the other, the risk of failing to reach the result you desire is high. If the things would be so easy and accessible to novices, do you think the "US-based AI firm Imagination Engines" would come with just two things it tries to "patent as AI inventions"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 06 2022, @02:37PM
I'd say most AI found "inventions" are at least as patent-worthy, if not more-so, than fully half of the things patented with me named as inventor in exchange for a couple thousand bucks bonus offered by my employers of the time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday June 06 2022, @07:31PM
Indeed. One should question the value of both patents and copyrights. At the very least, the length of their validity. Patents for, say, 7 years? Copyrights for...maybe 5 years? Enough time for an initial profit, then compete on your merits.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @11:47AM (23 children)
that very fact being demonstrable proof that there is no "inventive step" in it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @11:55AM (17 children)
Really? If I invest in an search for something in a given sci/tech domain (no intelligence required, just brute force search) and discover ways to solve a problem, isn't this invention?
How would be this different from Edison's approach to find a filament for incandescent bulbs?
How's this different from the painstaking search for chemical compounds with therapeutic effects? (and discover Viagra instead of a heart-related chest pain medication)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @01:14PM (6 children)
Business processes can't be patented. In many parts of the world you can't patent organisms either
Why should there be patented granted for the results of running an AI? At best there should be patents for the AI itself and only the end result of somebody had to actually do some creative transformation to make it work.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Monday June 06 2022, @01:35PM (1 child)
They most certainly can, at least in the US.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @01:43PM
That's not a helpful response. Business processes apparently are, but not methods. I'm not a lawyer, and really, business stuff like that should never have been subject to patent protection as that's mostly profitable in it's own.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @01:59PM (3 children)
For the same reasons patents that were obtained by using a calculator, or a sliding ruler or an abacus are still valid. AI was used as a tool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @04:11PM (2 children)
That's not even remotely the same thing, you could still get the results by hand, with AI, you're doing things that outright couldn't be done without the assist. For example, going through hundreds of thousands of possible molecular structures to find one that works. The AI being patented doesn't seem unreasonable, but allowing those molecules to be patented is going to lead to issues when the handful of people with all the computing power can shut everybody else out on the basis of AI software figuring out whether patenting the process of three molecule will exclude more competition.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @05:07PM (1 child)
It already happens this way today, without AI.
Like in "I don't need to run faster than the tiger, just faster than you" (translation: even without AI, already a few Big Pharma corps runs faster in regards with the compounds they are able to test than anyone else).
Besides, it's not such a big issue:
1. the domain of bio/chemical compounds is so vast, nobody will be able to explore it completely over the duration of a patent, with or without AI (i.e likely there will still be competition)
2. a patent expires. Assuming the absurd a single player manages to grab all the patents, the result will be all the knowledge is published by them and after 20-something years, everyone makes generics.
3. while the patents are still alive, we are no worse than before (without the knowledge now explained in the patents)
4. in emergency situations, patent suspension is not something unheard off. example [ft.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @05:28PM
That's really not the case. If you haven't already noticed it happening, either you're very young or you're hopelessly naive. The way that patents are awarded allows for their use in harming competition. It's more of an issue for software patents that don't require the same level of disclosure as other patents, but you do see it with chemical patents where the USPTO allows for processes to be patented or the molecules themselves which can effectively wall off certain areas of possible R&D unless an alternate pathway or alternate molecule can be found.
With AI being powered by super-computers, I see no reason to think that this isn't going to get worse as companies already abuse the processes that are currently available without the added benefit of being allowed to let AI do all the work. Obviously, AI doesn't just create itself, but that would be the reasonable place to put the patents, not on the actual output of the program.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @01:28PM (5 children)
You nailed it, it is NOT invention. The term is "prior art", does that ring a bell for you?
The crucial difference you oh-so-conveniently lost, is the "EXPERIMENTAL" qualifier on the Edison's approach. Same with Viagra and everything.
If experimental testing has been done, the inventor is the person who planned the testing. The fake "AI" has just as much relation to the invention as the word processor, the calendar, or any other program that person used in the course of doing their work.
If experimental testing has NOT been done, whoever applied for a patent need be prosecuted for fraud. Because fraud it is.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @01:50PM (4 children)
Are you sure about that everything nowadays?
A novel mode of packaging can be experimented by modelling the space and material behaviour in a computer - quite trivial nowadays. "A food container with a fractal surface that helps with insulation and stacking" could equally be obtained by experimentation in real world, but if the experimentation fits in a computer, why not use one?
Going further on this line: as long as the aspect of the reality in which you need experimenting can be accurately enough modeled/represented in a computer, experimenting in real world and experimenting in the world as modeled in a computer would lead to the same results.
How would the humanity benefit if one deny the speed/cost advantage of using the world as modeled in the computer as "that's not experimentation"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @03:58PM (3 children)
In this case, clearly the person who said "let's design a fractal food container and use and AI to optimize it" is the inventor, not the AI.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @05:15PM (2 children)
Agree.
Look, I only protest the extreme position of "anything obtained using AI should be unpatentable" - why should I refuse a tool that makes the discovery process faster? Patents expire, the sooner new knowledge is made public by disclosing it in a patent, the sooner it becomes available for anyone (skilled in the art) to use it (20 years down the road).
I do not protest the "AI should not be granted a patent", because nobody is going to benefit from an entity that don't see a patent as an incentive for disclosure or sustained future efforts in new inventions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday June 06 2022, @08:57PM (1 child)
You call that extreme? i say that the patent system should be entirely abolished. Would make these questions moot, and that's one reason why the system should be ended.
The biggest knock against the concept of intellectual property is that it is fundamentally wrong, in so many ways. Inventions are not the products of genius individuals laboring all alone, without benefit of education, past inventions, scientific discoveries, techniques, and so forth. it would be impossible to fairly compensate everyone whose work helped bring about an invention.
Another very bad thing about the patent system is the controlling and impermissive nature. The idea that people should check to make sure they're not violating any patents is absurd. There are millions of patents, many of them overly broad or trivial. You can't do anything inventive without breaking them by the dozen. Even if checking is tried, there's no guarantee that the patent holders can be contacted, and if they are, they can refuse all permission and the asker has no recourse. It shouldn't be possible for miserly hoarding of permission as if facts of nature weren't freely discoverable by anyone who thinks to search, as if they were gold or NFTs.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @09:32PM
Until you do, better deal with the reality in which we all are living.
Certainly TFA would not make sense if the patents are abolished.
BTW, care not to fall into the trap so many revolutions have fail-ended: down with the old! dang but what the heck do we put in place?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @05:57PM (3 children)
It's not an invention, it's a discovery
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @06:29PM (2 children)
All the while patentable.
As also discovery is "if one follows this chemical process using the equipment usual to the art, one can get the compound X" (where X may be as trivial as aspirin [googleapis.com])
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @08:35PM (1 child)
A discovery should not be patentable in the major jurisdictions (US, Europe) [wikipedia.org] because it lacks the requirements of being novel and non-obvious or requiring an inventive step. There's nothing inventive about searching through a long list of possibilities, and using an AI to plough through all the boring stuff, or even just to do it on a scale beyond what a person can manage to do, is too obvious to qualify as inventive. A lot of machines only exist to do repetitive, boring stuff reliably.
Just being the first to do something is not sufficient to make the something patentable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @09:27PM
But it is novel and/or inventive if one arrange the conditions of the search in a novel context, even when screening the same set of candidates.
It's not like you take an off-the-shelf software, tweak the command line arguments and input file and, voila, you have the results printed for you. Even if you use AI, you will tweak that software and search for the relevant features that describe the problem in AI terms and then find a fitness function and you all this for quite a long time until you hit the sweet spot. And you run the risk of never get it right at the end of the day (or allocated budget).
(Score: 2, Disagree) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @12:00PM (3 children)
This is selling "begging the question" as a valid argument. Go away, 'tis stupid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @01:33PM
The stupid here is you. As always.
You are a really low-class shill, dude, with your only useful quality being the utter lack of shame and conscience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 07 2022, @02:16AM (1 child)
This begs the question of why people get so upset with saying that something begs the question.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 07 2022, @02:57AM
Oh you punisher you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 07 2022, @03:00PM
I slightly disagree, I say grant the patent to the AI and give the AI a maximum 1 week patent lifespan to exploit and monetize the patent.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @11:48AM (9 children)
At their base, patents are (supposed to be) incentives for the inventor to share the invention publicly (as opposed to keeping it a commercial secret) How does this translate when the inventor is an AI?
Does AI itself have a motivation not to share the invention? Would granting a patent to an AI increase the AI motivation to keep inventing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @12:20PM (6 children)
Nothing at all can motivate an AI, it is a non-entity and undeserving of patents. There should be no protections for discoveries via AI.
A discovery via AI is about the same as assigning an AI the task of carving a statue of a bear. If it manages to make something vaguely bear-like through it's exhaustive process of nearly random attempts that is great, but the AI doesn't deserve a patent/copyright on it. The programmer didn't sculpt a bear either, they just pointed the AI in the desired direction and got lucky.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @12:39PM (5 children)
True. At least the AI of today.
Until someone using AI in a peculiar way discovers something quite good in solving a class of problems and keep it a commercial secret for some tens/hundred of years.
E.g. not like computational bio/chemistry is out of reach for the applicability of today's AI and the domain is humongous enough for the chance of someone else to stumble over the same thing to be infinitesimal.
Disagree. More like using a sliding ruler, some dices and an algorithm to generate increasingly better ideas and validate/disprove them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Monday June 06 2022, @12:46PM (2 children)
That changes nothing from today's scenario. Anyone who wishes to keep something as a trade secret for tens/hundreds of years is doing that already.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @01:00PM (1 child)
Heck, I wasn't clear enough. I was objecting to "no patent for you if you used an AI in the process of discovery"
The exchange goes like this:
- There should be no protections for discoveries via AI.
- if you don't give me any protection only because I used an AI, I have no incentive to share the discovery I made using my AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @01:36PM
I see no issue with that. Others would be free to use AI to solve the same problem if it was that important.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @01:36PM (1 child)
As soon as we have AIs qualified for citizenship rights, the question will be moot. Until that happens, persons are persons and things are things.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @01:55PM
I think the correction is what you had in mind.
On the ground that a corporate is not quite a citizen (e.g. can't vote), but can still own (right derived from) patents. When AI will reach at least the level of "have right to own something", the question will indeed be moot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @12:54PM (1 child)
The patent should be issued to whoever has the power to withhold a discovery from which humanity can benefit unless motivated by a patent.
And this no matter if the discovery was made by AI or by a horde of scientist-slaves bound by work-for-hire and NDAs (remember the ""Tesla, you don't understand our American humor""?) or any other means or combinations thereof.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @01:38PM
Generating reams of bullshit text does not a "discovery" make. What it makes, is FRAUD.
(Score: 3, Informative) by gringer on Monday June 06 2022, @11:54AM (5 children)
If an invention was created from a purely computational process, then it has no inventor.
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @11:58AM (1 child)
You really mean any things that the Folding@home would discover are no invention?
What else is needed to become an invention then?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @04:15PM
That project just identifies molecules, it does not give you the method to create the molecule. That is also a possible patentable invention. It's been a while since I ran that software though, do maybe they've broadened it to include that as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @12:16PM
i bet IBM and Amazon are real interested in who picks up the credit for an AI invention.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @04:07PM (1 child)
No, this is not quite true. In all cases if it is patentable the inventor would be the one who programmed the computer. Ultimately someone said "lets use a computer to brute force an optimal solution for this thing", that is the creative step.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @08:44PM
I'm not sure that was creative even when someone first said it, several decades ago now. That was always seen as one of the reasons for developing computers and their predecessors (Colossus, Babbage's calculating engines). Nowadays having a computer do the tedious work is just one of the many, run-of-the-mill reasons for using a computer.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Monday June 06 2022, @12:15PM (6 children)
AIs do not invent. Neither do hammers, pencils, or calculators. People invent.
Since a lot of people are involved in making an AI program, including those who produced the original data that went in to it, the REAL question should be which PERSON or PEOPLE gets the credit.
Given the state of "AI", I'd actually suspect that any "invention" it poops out is just an unoriginal distortion of some set of existing "inventions".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @12:20PM
FTFY.
Patent laws are the root of all evil.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @12:27PM
Nothing new here, ever since "work for hire" was invented. Almost nobody is able to invent something alone nowadays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @01:37PM (3 children)
Who invents and who owns (the rights derived from) a patent are two different things.
E.g. neither do corporations invent. However, most of the still active patents are owned by the corporation nowadays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @01:46PM (2 children)
Corporations are nothing but legal fiction to shield physical persons controlling them from liability.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 06 2022, @03:00PM (1 child)
Whatever you may think of their merit, no matter if you like it or not, in reality they exist and have rights to property (both material and imag... err... intellectual property).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @09:03PM
That will continue until the collective decides to lynch corrupt judges. I definitely don't condone it, but realistically, the judges are selected to rule in corrupt ways by corrupt politicians. Corporations can't be jailed or executed, so clearly they shouldn't have constitutional rights independent of the others and operators. What next, let them directly vote in elections.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @01:50PM
i think, in general, that the universe keeps track of "who made what', tho the " value" of the paper created holding arbitrary symboles explaining "copy-right laws" is prolly not very high on its agenda ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @04:38PM
The Professor gets credit for the discovery
(Score: 2) by Michael on Monday June 06 2022, @05:21PM (1 child)
How expensive are the AI's lawyers?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 07 2022, @02:20AM
Generally a lot less expensive, but they're pretty limited at this stage. They'll help walk you through the process of figuring out if a ticket is valid and what objections to bring up, but there are no AI lawyers yet that would have been able to deal with something as complicated as that Depp vs., Heard trial that just wrapped up. I would expect that we'd see AI paralegals far before we see proper AI lawyers, just because that's a bit simpler and the results would already be reviewed by an attorney.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06 2022, @11:07PM (1 child)
Let's just take one Commonwealth and one State example from the UNSW's jurisdiction .. to see what the Australian Government even thinks a "person" is ..
National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act (1984), §7
https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2021C00509 [legislation.gov.au]
person means any of the following:
(a) an individual;
(b) a body corporate;
(c) a trust;
(d) a corporation sole;
(e) a body politic;
(f) a local governing body.
State Records Act (1998)
https://legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/html/inforce/current/act-1998-017#sec.3 [nsw.gov.au]
person includes a public office and a body (whether or not incorporated).
public office means each of the following—
(a) a department, office, commission, board, corporation, agency, service or instrumentality, exercising any function of any branch of the Government of the State,
(b) a body (whether or not incorporated) established for a public purpose,
(c) a council, county council or joint organisation under the Local Government Act 1993,
(d) the Cabinet and the Executive Council,
(e) the office and official establishment of the Governor,
(f) a House of Parliament,
(g) a court or tribunal,
(h) a State collecting institution,
(i) a Royal Commission or Commission of Inquiry,
(j) a State owned corporation,
(k) the holder of any office under the Crown,
(k1) a political office holder (other than the Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly) within the meaning of the Members of Parliament Staff Act 2013,
(l) any body, office or institution that exercises any public functions and that is declared by the regulations to be a public office for the purposes of this Act (whether or not the body, office or institution is a public office under some other paragraph of this definition), but does not include the Workers Compensation Nominal Insurer established under the Workers Compensation Act 1987 or a justice of the peace within the meaning of the Justices of the Peace Act 2002.
Note—
In some cases, a private organisation can be a public office in respect of records that were formerly the records of a public office. See section 8.
lmao! .. this code *already* needs a re-write.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 07 2022, @03:02PM
I wont believe that b-f are a person until Texas executes one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 07 2022, @01:39AM (1 child)
The c0lo discussion!! Every other post was they!
(Score: 3, Touché) by janrinok on Tuesday June 07 2022, @06:23AM
And every comment he made was intelligent and worth considering. I may disagree with some of them but they contributed positively to the discussion.
Now about your comment......
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by r1348 on Tuesday June 07 2022, @06:08PM
Any other questions?