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Only real people can patent inventions – not AI, US Government says

cnn.com

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Re: Only real people can patent inventions – not AI, US Government says

#51

Post by godelski »

bdowling wrote: post #41
Delumine wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a reason why anyone would want to patent their invention under an LLM though

This announcement was prompted in part by an AI activist named Stephen Thaler (referenced in the article), who sued for AIs to be recognized as inventors and authors. His goal was to give certain moral rights to AIs. At the time, that seemed mostly harmless. Now, however, the idea of giving rights to AIs seems like a bad idea.

It makes sense to give thinking sentient creatures rights, be they carbon or silicon lifeforms. But I think giving current AI rights is jumping the gun quite a bit and will have fairly bad consequences. Namely if AI can invent pattents then what's to stop OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic, etc from claiming ownership of any work invented with the help of their AI tools? Our goals are to protect the little guy. Someday in the future I hope that this will include artificial life, but for now protecting the little guy means protecting ownership over their ideas and work irrespective of their tooling used to generate that work.

Re: Only real people can patent inventions – not AI, US Government says

#52

Post by caymanjim »

mc32 wrote: post #48
caymanjim wrote: post #45

This is utterly meaningless. Use an AI to invent something, write down what the AI invented, slap your name on it. Patent. Not only is it unenforceable, it's stupid. Using tools is part of inventing. This is nothing but political theatre prompted by fear. I too fear AI, and think it will make us all obsolete in my lifetime, but that doesn't justify meaningless rulings like this.

The patent can’t be granted to an AI. You can use whatever you want to create an invention you make claim on.

Fair enough, I shouldn't comment before I've had coffee.

Re: Only real people can patent inventions – not AI, US Government says

#53

Post by Joeri »

Delumine wrote: post #26
KoolKat23 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand it, you can use AI or whatever as a tool but the patent must be applied for under your name with you as the creator.

I don't see a reason why anyone would want to patent their invention under an LLM though

At some point after the invention of AGI but before ASI there will be a legal fight to get personhood assigned to AI. This is a precursor battle to that. It will either lead to a broader definition of person where the higher mammals gain people’s rights as well, and a whole bunch of whalers will get brought up on charges of xenocide, or more likely it will lead to an extension of corporate personhood where the AI always has a human owner, but can itself own things.

Of course, if ASI arrives the point is moot. It will inevitably take over from us and shortly after that the concept of property will probably become irrelevant.

Re: Only real people can patent inventions – not AI, US Government says

#54

Post by gowld »

Delumine wrote: post #17
lallysingh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone challenged your patent, they can try to prove that you used an AI.

But there are AIs made to self-correct that they aren't AI. Humanizing their work. Likewise If I use AI to give me a blueprint of an idea, but I use my brain and methodologies to "reverse-engineer" it, how is this even enforced. I doubt someone submitting to the USPTO is going to include "AS A LLM" somewhere in the submission lol.

The requirement for a patent is that it is novel and non-obvious.

If a "person having ordinary skill in the art" can create it, it's not novel. If anyone with a ChatGPT subscription can create it, it's "obvious".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_having_ordinary_skill_i...

Re: Only real people can patent inventions – not AI, US Government says

#55

Post by uni_rule »

pfdietz wrote: post #2

AI could, however, poison the well for human patents, by making inventions and putting them into public view. Let's have LLMs churn out millions of discoveries, stick them on a public web site, then use that as a resource to kill other patents.

So you are just flooding a submission box with meaningless noise that at worst merely sounds plausible but doesn't actually work that way in experimentation? It's like trying to pull knowledge from the old Library of Babel website, a repository with every combination of letters, a tremendous volume of noise, and zero discernment of what is true or applicable among it. At best it is merely a glorified filter to that repository that only outputs sentences that are coherent at face value.

Re: Only real people can patent inventions – not AI, US Government says

#58

Post by gowld »

denton-scratch wrote: post #46

Presumably "real people" includes corporations, in the USG's worldview.

Corporations can apply, but not invent. https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/essentials

(The OP article and title are incorrect. The new ruling is about inventors, not patentors / applicants.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/02/13/2024-02...

)

Re: Only real people can patent inventions – not AI, US Government says

#59

Post by Nevermark »

bee_rider wrote: post #40
Delumine wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a reason why anyone would want to patent their invention under an LLM though

Someone tried to do it already. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/10/us-co... I think Dr Thaler is trying to make a philosophical point. But I wonder if in the corporate space it would be desirable to have a patent that is just immediately assigned to the non-sentient AI? (In general I wonder this about AI’s, they seem to be a way to give the company itself, beyond the humans which compose it, the a…

The rights of a patent can be assigned to anyone by the patent author.

So an AI run businesses just needs to keep a human around for their invention patenting and rights assigning process.

AI’s won’t have any trouble creating the supporting artifact trail.

Soon the practice of AI/corporate entities moving assets through “shell” people to launder human personhood may be commonplace.

Dystopia is just around the corner.

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