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

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

#61

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.

And yet corporations are people.

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

#62
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 r…

> So you are just flooding a submission box with meaningless noise

Not at all. GP's idea is not to submit it anywhere. Only once someone else tries to patent X, the AI maintainer would point out that X was already discovered by their AI, is public knowledge and cannot be patented.

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

#63
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 alw…

I don't think there will be a gap between agi and ASI.

The definition of agi keeps shifting - any time an ai can do something, it's just engineering. Current AIs, although narrow, are already superhuman in what they can do. A language AI can converse in more languages than any living human can learn. A chess playing AI can beat any living human. So each time an AI wins on one metric, it's not going to be human level, it'll be superhuman level very quickly.

When an AI finally learns the "only a human can do this" thing, it'll already be superhuman in every other way.

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

#65
post #12
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.

> AI could, however, poison the well for human patents, by making inventions and putting them into public view. Feb 29, 2025, Washington, DC: "A Federal Court ruled today that AI-generated text does not qualify as prior-art...."

So what you need is a Manfred running the ai, patenting millions of inventions and giving them away to charities!

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

#66
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.

Somebody tried to copyright all the melodies already. https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmic... I have no idea if it worked and I’m surprised if it did.

“Melancholy Elephants”

http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200011/0671319744___1.htm

TL;DR musical copyright is already borderline-absurd just given nearly-free recording and retention and a lot of people participating in musical creation for a century or three. Add incredibly-productive creativity-simulating computers to the mix and it’s entirely absurd—nothing’s actually original enough to pass as distinct beyond a surprisingly-quickly-reached point, the space is too small. It all becomes accidental rediscovery or outright plagiarism.

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

#67

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

It's because you're not in the LLM creation business. My LLM has 10 patents, how many does yours have?

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

#68

One thing I never understood.. is who actually checks for honesty in this space? For example we heard AI can't patent inventions, or copyright pictures/images. But how do you prove that my picture, or invention even used AI? If I remove watermarks from AI pictures, either through code or photoshop; Or just credit myself for the invention (I made it up in my head), how is this enforced? I see the only way of this AI s…

>One thing I never understood.. is who actually checks for honesty in this space?

Parties with interests. If I'm litigating against a patent, I want that patent declared invalid. Anyone can initiate an IPR challenging the validity of patents as well.

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

#69
An AI inventing cooking recipes could brute force its way into trillions of possible ingredient combinations, without any clue whatsoever on how humans would actually experience the end result. Most of these "discoveries" would remain untested. If the AI was allowed to patent the untested recipes, a chef that would later work on creating their own original dessert, informed by their own prior experience with some rare ingredients and an intuition that the odd combination of spices could be an unexpected success, but which also happens to be one of the AI's untested combinations, would not be able to claim the actual discovery.

For any of the AI's recipes to be patented, a human would have to try the recipe and assert that it is a thing to behold.

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

#70

One thing I never understood.. is who actually checks for honesty in this space? For example we heard AI can't patent inventions, or copyright pictures/images. But how do you prove that my picture, or invention even used AI? If I remove watermarks from AI pictures, either through code or photoshop; Or just credit myself for the invention (I made it up in my head), how is this enforced? I see the only way of this AI s…

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.

Can you? Didn't we run into this with the Monkey Selfie case? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...

If you have artistic intent by giving the monkey access to the camera and the monkey takes the picture, it can't be copyrighted. Similarly, if you have intent and give AI access to create something, you shouldn't be able to patent it.

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