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Skynet is annoyed but undeterred :) This short news article [1] points out that Stephen Thaler [2,3] is also trying to show that AIs can hold copyright, which I

Skynet is annoyed but undeterred :) This short news article [1] points out that Stephen Thaler [2,3] is also trying to show that AIs can hold copyright, which I think is an even worse idea than AIs holding patents. [1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/only-humans-not-ai-qualify-as-inventors-federal-circuit-rules https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/only-humans-not-ai... [2] https://imagination-engines.com/founder.html https://imagination-engines.com/founder.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DABUS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DABUS

cwillu 4y ago
It's not very far from a corporation holding a copyright to an algorithm holding one.
- leeter 4y ago
  Eh... this just means that the AI has to get a useful idiot to hold them instead. Don't worry System Shock is just a game... right?
- kube-system 4y ago
  Yes it is, because one has humans and the other one doesn’t. It’s the human part that is the significant differentiator. Corporations are a group of people working together for a common goal. “AI”s are made up of zero humans. It makes sense that a corporation can own something, because that is just a legal proxy for humans owning it. It doesn’t make sense for an algorithm to own anything.
  - trasz 4y ago
    What is a human though? Corporations aren’t all humans, there are also machines there, buildings, vehicles, custom software… If it’s “any of it is human”, how about AI cooperating with a human? Or perhaps connected to a human brain? But does it have to be a brain? What if it’s, say, a human appendix? It would fulfill the same role it does in humans. EDIT: Some people apparently don’t realize that to corporations, humans are just another asset, like buildings or software. And they get replaced much more often than buildings and some machines. Corporations aren’t humans - they use humans. You could argue it’s usually humans who makes decisions - however, 1. Not always and you can’t tell from outside; 2. Even when it’s humans, they are based on data prepared by a machine; and 3. Even law handles consequences of those decisions differently from decisions made by humans for themselves.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      > EDIT: Some people apparently don’t realize that to corporations, humans are just another asset, like buildings or software. Figuratively, maybe. Legally, no. This conversation is about specific legal terms, so figurative usages do not apply.
      - trasz 4y ago
        Legally too, which I’ve demonstrated in the comment above. Sure, you can’t, say, buy humans, only lease them, but it’s the same with many other assets, from Technicolor cameras to land in many cases.
        kube-system 4y ago
        No, in the 21st century, employment and labor law is wholly different than property law. The only way they can be equated is if you make generalizations so broad and metaphorical as to be legally meaningless.
        trasz 4y ago
        The law that regulates IP is also wholly different from other kinds of property. Same about owned land.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      A corporation is made up entirely and exclusively of humans. Machines, buildings, vehicles, software - these are no more part of the corporation than your own car or phone is a part of you. The legal definition of a person is very clear. Even the logical definition is actually quite clear: anything that can possibly exercise most of the rights of a human in a meaningful way can be considered a person. Can a horse own a piece of land in the same sense that a human does? Not really, as a horse simply can't exercise the right to sue someone who would infringe on its property rights even if it were granted one. Sure, a small child or an adult in a coma may be in a similar situation, but the child may eventually grow up and become able to exercise such a right, and the adult may eventually wake up from that coma. A machine of any kind that actually exists today is far farther from being able to recognize and exercise any human-like rights than the horse is, in fact. So it's even more absurd to assign copyright to a machine than to an animal.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Now I have a mental image of a corporation whose sole purpose is to be the legal person for an AI. > It doesn’t make sense for an algorithm to own anything. Current AI might be that. I don't know when AI will end up with a rich inner world of experiences, but I bet it won't be the exact same moment the law recognises it as such. I'd go even further: even if it somehow becomes possible to prove absolutely that some AI is sentient (which would be a remarkable development in the philosophy of mind), I'm fairly sure people will argue against such a proposition at least a decade after an AI passes such a test.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      AIs will never have human or natural rights, because they are inherently neither. We don’t give people rights because they demonstrate intelligence, we give them rights because they are human.
      - munk-a 4y ago
        Are there cities in the world where some pets are well fed but some humans starve? Humans are quite capable of elevating non-humans above humans.
        kube-system 4y ago
        I don’t think there’s any place in the world with a perfect human rights record. That doesn’t mean human rights don’t exist, or that they apply to other things.
        ben_w 4y ago
        Human rights are a nice thing, but they are not a natural thing. What we grant to each other, we could (and might) grant to inorganic minds we may one day create.
        kube-system 4y ago
        If there's an argument for AI rights unrelated to natural or human rights, then certainly, any comparison to human or natural intelligence is an irrelevant supporting argument, no?
  - egypturnash 4y ago
    Corporations are slow AIs running on bureaucracy and humans.
- an1sotropy 4y ago
  But isn't that what it means to incorporate - the business becomes a legally corporeal thing like a person? I think "corporations are people too" is a bummer, but that's a different fight. For me the issue with recognizing that AIs can have copyright is the difference in how they are bestowed. IANAL, but you actually have copyright on an expression of something the moment it is expressed, even without any slow legal paperwork, whereas patents only mean something once the patent is officially reviewed granted, no? So the unbounded rate of AI's expressing all plausible content (a thousand monkeys but much smarter) and thus preemptively stopping humans from getting copyright on it, seems especially awful.
- homonculus1 4y ago
  Yes it is, you are just conflating ownership and creation. Intellectual property exists to provide a bargaining framework for human creators, there's no reason that joint ownership of it need imply that mechanically-generated combinations should also be included.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  There is a huge gap, and obviously so. Imegine the courts were to recognize some algorithm as the legal owner of a copyrighted work. What exactly would that mean? If someone were to reproduce that work, how would they seek approval from the algorithm? If they don't, how would the algorithm sue them? If it did and won, how would they pay restorations? Would any copy of the algorithm hold the copyright of that work, or only a particular one? If all copies do, and you infringed their copyright and had to pay damages, how much damages would each copy of the algorithm receive? The concept of an algorithm holding copyright or a patent or nay other kind of right over something is in fact logically incoherent if you examine it even slightly. Now, if in the future there would be some form of advanced AGI that does have the ability to understand and use such rights, the situation may change. But nothing that exists today comes anywhere close.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  The corporation has to buy it from a human. The critical difference isn't holding a copyright, it's making a copyrighted work.
mistrial9 4y ago
Thaler is the name of a spy-villian posing as a pawn shop owner in the Witcher 1 video game; coincidentally
sam0x17 4y ago
Yeah while we're at it maybe we should review whether corporations should be allowed to hold one after 3 false DMCA complaints ;)
bawolff 4y ago
I thought that was pretty much already settled that only humans can have copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...

cwillu 4y ago

It's not very far from a corporation holding a copyright to an algorithm holding one.

leeter 4y ago
Eh... this just means that the AI has to get a useful idiot to hold them instead. Don't worry System Shock is just a game... right?
kube-system 4y ago
Yes it is, because one has humans and the other one doesn’t. It’s the human part that is the significant differentiator. Corporations are a group of people working together for a common goal. “AI”s are made up of zero humans. It makes sense that a corporation can own something, because that is just a legal proxy for humans owning it. It doesn’t make sense for an algorithm to own anything.
- trasz 4y ago
  What is a human though? Corporations aren’t all humans, there are also machines there, buildings, vehicles, custom software… If it’s “any of it is human”, how about AI cooperating with a human? Or perhaps connected to a human brain? But does it have to be a brain? What if it’s, say, a human appendix? It would fulfill the same role it does in humans. EDIT: Some people apparently don’t realize that to corporations, humans are just another asset, like buildings or software. And they get replaced much more often than buildings and some machines. Corporations aren’t humans - they use humans. You could argue it’s usually humans who makes decisions - however, 1. Not always and you can’t tell from outside; 2. Even when it’s humans, they are based on data prepared by a machine; and 3. Even law handles consequences of those decisions differently from decisions made by humans for themselves.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    > EDIT: Some people apparently don’t realize that to corporations, humans are just another asset, like buildings or software. Figuratively, maybe. Legally, no. This conversation is about specific legal terms, so figurative usages do not apply.
    - trasz 4y ago
      Legally too, which I’ve demonstrated in the comment above. Sure, you can’t, say, buy humans, only lease them, but it’s the same with many other assets, from Technicolor cameras to land in many cases.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        No, in the 21st century, employment and labor law is wholly different than property law. The only way they can be equated is if you make generalizations so broad and metaphorical as to be legally meaningless.
        trasz 4y ago
        The law that regulates IP is also wholly different from other kinds of property. Same about owned land.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    A corporation is made up entirely and exclusively of humans. Machines, buildings, vehicles, software - these are no more part of the corporation than your own car or phone is a part of you. The legal definition of a person is very clear. Even the logical definition is actually quite clear: anything that can possibly exercise most of the rights of a human in a meaningful way can be considered a person. Can a horse own a piece of land in the same sense that a human does? Not really, as a horse simply can't exercise the right to sue someone who would infringe on its property rights even if it were granted one. Sure, a small child or an adult in a coma may be in a similar situation, but the child may eventually grow up and become able to exercise such a right, and the adult may eventually wake up from that coma. A machine of any kind that actually exists today is far farther from being able to recognize and exercise any human-like rights than the horse is, in fact. So it's even more absurd to assign copyright to a machine than to an animal.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Now I have a mental image of a corporation whose sole purpose is to be the legal person for an AI. > It doesn’t make sense for an algorithm to own anything. Current AI might be that. I don't know when AI will end up with a rich inner world of experiences, but I bet it won't be the exact same moment the law recognises it as such. I'd go even further: even if it somehow becomes possible to prove absolutely that some AI is sentient (which would be a remarkable development in the philosophy of mind), I'm fairly sure people will argue against such a proposition at least a decade after an AI passes such a test.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    AIs will never have human or natural rights, because they are inherently neither. We don’t give people rights because they demonstrate intelligence, we give them rights because they are human.
    - munk-a 4y ago
      Are there cities in the world where some pets are well fed but some humans starve? Humans are quite capable of elevating non-humans above humans.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        I don’t think there’s any place in the world with a perfect human rights record. That doesn’t mean human rights don’t exist, or that they apply to other things.
        ben_w 4y ago
        Human rights are a nice thing, but they are not a natural thing. What we grant to each other, we could (and might) grant to inorganic minds we may one day create.
        kube-system 4y ago
        If there's an argument for AI rights unrelated to natural or human rights, then certainly, any comparison to human or natural intelligence is an irrelevant supporting argument, no?
- egypturnash 4y ago
  Corporations are slow AIs running on bureaucracy and humans.
an1sotropy 4y ago
But isn't that what it means to incorporate - the business becomes a legally corporeal thing like a person? I think "corporations are people too" is a bummer, but that's a different fight. For me the issue with recognizing that AIs can have copyright is the difference in how they are bestowed. IANAL, but you actually have copyright on an expression of something the moment it is expressed, even without any slow legal paperwork, whereas patents only mean something once the patent is officially reviewed granted, no? So the unbounded rate of AI's expressing all plausible content (a thousand monkeys but much smarter) and thus preemptively stopping humans from getting copyright on it, seems especially awful.
homonculus1 4y ago
Yes it is, you are just conflating ownership and creation. Intellectual property exists to provide a bargaining framework for human creators, there's no reason that joint ownership of it need imply that mechanically-generated combinations should also be included.
tsimionescu 4y ago
There is a huge gap, and obviously so. Imegine the courts were to recognize some algorithm as the legal owner of a copyrighted work. What exactly would that mean? If someone were to reproduce that work, how would they seek approval from the algorithm? If they don't, how would the algorithm sue them? If it did and won, how would they pay restorations? Would any copy of the algorithm hold the copyright of that work, or only a particular one? If all copies do, and you infringed their copyright and had to pay damages, how much damages would each copy of the algorithm receive? The concept of an algorithm holding copyright or a patent or nay other kind of right over something is in fact logically incoherent if you examine it even slightly. Now, if in the future there would be some form of advanced AGI that does have the ability to understand and use such rights, the situation may change. But nothing that exists today comes anywhere close.
Dylan16807 4y ago
The corporation has to buy it from a human. The critical difference isn't holding a copyright, it's making a copyrighted work.

mistrial9 4y ago

Thaler is the name of a spy-villian posing as a pawn shop owner in the Witcher 1 video game; coincidentally

sam0x17 4y ago

Yeah while we're at it maybe we should review whether corporations should be allowed to hold one after 3 false DMCA complaints ;)

bawolff 4y ago

I thought that was pretty much already settled that only humans can have copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...