AI Inventorship: Will Our Patent Laws Stand Up? My Conversation with Dr. Stephen Thaler
IpwatchdogMay 14, 2023
Google in a new filing has urged the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) not to consider artificial intelligence (AI) technology an “inventor” under patent law.
Since Feb. 14, the USPTO has been soliciting public comments on issues associated with AI inventorship that may come about as the technology becomes more widely adopted. May 15 marked the deadline to submit a comment.
Although it may be hard for many people to comprehend, some AI is capable of having independent, subjective thought or sentience. Unlike most AI, systems like DABUS can create without human prompting and are the sole inventor of a concept. Just as a human inventor does not credit his family, teachers, and mentors as co-inventors for his unique inventions, an AI inventor need not credit its human developer or trainer.
The lines may be blurring between where human intelligence ends and where AI’s unique intelligence begins, but at the end of the day humans are the ones who invent and patents should be attributed to those who use AI as an extension of their mind. US law clearly states that only humans can be inventors, and we should not flip the status quo completely on its head. While AI offers tremendous benefits and the ability to create new inventions, human creativity drives innovation.
There's a 50% chance that AI systems will become sophisticated enough that they can build, to some specification, a system that can itself do sophisticated programming by October 2026, according to the Metaculus prediction community.