Considering how far what's currently styled "AI" is from a real GAI, that's got to be a gimmick.
South Africa issues world’s first patent listing AI as inventor
51–60 of 77 posts
Re: South Africa issues world’s first patent listing AI as inventor
#52I don't know about you, but for me this feels like the gates of hell opening for patent trolls. AI can produce thousands of patents in a single day. As always patent trolls make no money from patents, but from the bureaucratic process. So a schema like this that allows virtually unlimited patents to be created will increase even more trolls misbehavior
You could use AI to produce thousands of patents in a single day and put your name as the inventor - I'm not sure having the AI system recorded as inventor adds much for patent trolls.
Re: South Africa issues world’s first patent listing AI as inventor
#53It's not so impressive when you realise that South Africa is a non-examining patent issuer - patents are issued as long as all the forms are properly filled out.
https://www.bowmanslaw.com/insights/intellectual-property/so...
A markov-chain based word-generator could just have easily gotten the patent issued, because the patent office does not examine the patent application for patentability, it only checks that the correct procedure is followed.
Re: South Africa issues world’s first patent listing AI as inventor
#54Yeah the rest of the world declined this because the AI (1) isn’t a legal person (2) wouldn’t be able to confer ownership and (3) identify when the patent was being infringed. This is silly. Great theater, but nothing else. That being said AI patents are an issue, but I don’t think they’re quite there yet.
> That being said AI patents are an issue, but I don’t think they’re quite there yet.
The 1981 ZX81 Chess program that ran in 1kiB of RAM would have astonished a 19th century observer and would have qualified as "artificial intelligence" from their point of view. What's currently called "AI" is not that much different from that program. Claiming it has somehow any kind of personhood is just nonsensical, and probably a publicity stunt. Why not list SPICE or your favorite finite elements solver in your patent application as a contributor?
Re: South Africa issues world’s first patent listing AI as inventor
#55I don't know about you, but for me this feels like the gates of hell opening for patent trolls. AI can produce thousands of patents in a single day. As always patent trolls make no money from patents, but from the bureaucratic process. So a schema like this that allows virtually unlimited patents to be created will increase even more trolls misbehavior
Then patent offices will generate adversarial AI review examiners. Together the AI trolls and AI examiners might for the first time produce true innovation out of the patent-giving process
Considering the quality of current examinations in the approval process, I don't see how AI can do any worse.
Basically now instead of doing a proper technical analysis and search over already approved patents, seems they just approve and "let the courts handle it".
I understand a proper type of technical patent analysis in the approval process is extremely hard and resource consuming, but the way it's handled now is killing anyone not having a legal firm on their speed dial and cash to burn.
Re: South Africa issues world’s first patent listing AI as inventor
#56I don't know about you, but for me this feels like the gates of hell opening for patent trolls. AI can produce thousands of patents in a single day. As always patent trolls make no money from patents, but from the bureaucratic process. So a schema like this that allows virtually unlimited patents to be created will increase even more trolls misbehavior
If AI just churns out a whole bunch of stuff with no known useful application that can be demonstrated in physical reality, it won't be able to patent that.
"[A] patent is not a hunting license. It is not a reward for the search, but compensation for its successful conclusion" - Brenner v. Manson [1]
In the above case, the inventor discovered a whole class of molecules. The Supreme Court said that you can't patent that because you have to show that each thing you patent can be used for something useful. Basically, the inventor couldn't just claim the whole class of molecules to keep anyone from using them and then figure out what they're good for later.
Re: South Africa issues world’s first patent listing AI as inventor
#57Yeah the rest of the world declined this because the AI (1) isn’t a legal person (2) wouldn’t be able to confer ownership and (3) identify when the patent was being infringed. This is silly. Great theater, but nothing else. That being said AI patents are an issue, but I don’t think they’re quite there yet.
> That being said AI patents are an issue, but I don’t think they’re quite there yet. The 1981 ZX81 Chess program that ran in 1kiB of RAM would have astonished a 19th century observer and would have qualified as "artificial intelligence" from their point of view. What's currently called "AI" is not that much different from that program. Claiming it has somehow any kind of personhood is just nonsensical, and probably…
Over time we realize things we thought required intelligence turn out to not.
Re: South Africa issues world’s first patent listing AI as inventor
#58This is not real.
Re: South Africa issues world’s first patent listing AI as inventor
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then patent offices will generate adversarial AI review examiners. Together the AI trolls and AI examiners might for the first time produce true innovation out of the patent-giving process
You forgot to mention the AI judges, when there is a dispute.
Isn't that just the objective function?
Re: South Africa issues world’s first patent listing AI as inventor
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because people are not objects or expert systems.That’s not even a hard concept. It’s like asking if you can be considered a plant because you drink water and grow taller…it’s not looking at the right details. “Tools do stuff, humans do stuff, are humans tools?” Is abuse of transitive property in an illogical way.
Of course we're more than just that, but if we agree on the definition of tool to be "an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment" (lifted from wikipedia) then wouldn't you agree that humans are being used on a daily basis exactly this way?
If we agree on the definition of a broom as something that can sweep the floor and say that humans can also sweep the floor, wouldn't you agree that humans are brooms often on a daily basis?