8 ms·

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.

Delumine 3y ago
I don't see a reason why anyone would want to patent their invention under an LLM though
- whaleofatw2022 3y ago
  The thought that crosses my mind, is an AI company could try to put in TOS such a requirement, so that they could get royalties.
  - suby 3y ago
    This is a very good ruling then, from that perspective.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Someone tried to do it already. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/10/us-court-rules-once-again-that-ai-software-cant-hold-a-patent/ 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 ability to make decisions and create things).
  - Nevermark 3y ago
    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.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      If it just has one human, it is putting all the eggs in the basket of that human not defecting, right? I think it will want enough humans in the company to make it a difficult coordination problem, to overthrow the AI.
- bdowling 3y ago
  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.
  - gowld 3y ago
    Why bad idea?
  - godelski 3y ago
    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.
    - sublinear 3y ago
      In the absence of more rigorous definitions of "life" or "sentience" we must have such laws. This has been an issue for a long time and doesn't just affect AI (people on life support, abortion, etc). Surely we should solve those legal problems before deciding whether an AI gets to be a person.
      - godelski 3y ago
        It may be possible that we never have such a definition and we're stuck with Justice Potter's reasoning. You're certainly right that there are complexities, but this is an argument about focusing on the spirit of the law and recognizing that there are many nuances that cause there to be no globally optimal solution for the vast majority of problems (if not all).
- Joeri 3y ago
  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.
  - exe34 3y ago
    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.
    - ForIveSyntax 3y ago
      Yes, they’re better at chess. No, they’re profoundly incompetent at conversation, just incompetent at many languages at once. Where else are they superhuman? The ability to generate unoriginal, uncanny art faster than a painter? Fair-ish enough. It’s not just moving the goalposts. It’s more like we didn’t know where the goalposts were.
      - exe34 3y ago
        If they were profoundly incompetent at conversation, we wouldn't be worried about weaponization of LLMs to sway public opinion. If the things they write and the images or voices or videos they made were worthless, we wouldn't be worried about how they displace carbon-based artists. Any commercially relevant shortcomings present today will be gone in version n+1 or soon after.
- waynesonfire 3y ago
  It's because you're not in the LLM creation business. My LLM has 10 patents, how many does yours have?
tapoxi 3y ago
Can you? Didn't we run into this with the Monkey Selfie case? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute 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.
- dmurray 3y ago
  We did run into that issue with monkeys and copyright, and we ran into it again with AI and patents. The Copyright Office ruled one way on monkeys and copyright, and an appeals court held that they were largely correct. The Patent and Trademarks Office ruled the other way on AI and patents. It - or any court making a decision on it - might be influenced by the monkeys and copyright case, but they're not bound by it. Monkeys are different things from computers, patents are different from copyright, and the laws for one need not be the same as the other.
- SkyBelow 3y ago
  With copyright, it applies to the specific work. With patents, it applies to a more general idea. Someone else can't come copyright that same photo later, but could someone else come and patent the method later? If not, then isn't the AI still good for invalidating the possibility to even patent the item. If so, then what must the other person do that lets them apply for the patent, and could that just be added as a step to applying for the patent?
advisedwang 3y ago
No, the ruling is more than that it must be filed in the name of a human. It also says 'a real person must have made a “significant contribution”'.
- breather 3y ago
  Oh, so it's effectively a useless ruling. Got it.
  - mpalmer 3y ago
    It is not useless. Patent seekers can use this in future lawsuits contesting an existing patent's validity.
    - breather 3y ago
      Sure, but we're still stuck with the patent.
  - justapassenger 3y ago
    [dead]
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  It’s both. Most of the cases are about the former. People trying to credit AI. These people are largely dumb. It is technically true that the latter is there, but you have to go out of your way to not get a patent for something you create using ai as a tool. It’s very easy to circumvent because it is not meant to be an obstruction to using ai to discover things in the first place.
- KoolKat23 3y ago
  That's interesting, I'd say this probably in a roundabout way is meant to ensure it is novel. A requirement for patents.
- O1111OOO 3y ago
  > No, the ruling is more than that it must be filed in the name of a human. It also says 'a real person must have made a “significant contribution”'. This is so interesting... it sounds to me that operators can have AIs "inventing" things and publicly sharing these things. Creating so much stuff (like bitcoin but for AI) covering virtually everything - from science to music. And because no humans contributed to these inventions, they all essentially become Public Domain. Because AIs can churn out inventions at breathtaking speeds... they might leave nothing for humans to invent, nothing to copyright, nothing to attached words like Intellectual Property to. Information is Free? Infinite monkey theorem?

Delumine 3y ago

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

whaleofatw2022 3y ago
The thought that crosses my mind, is an AI company could try to put in TOS such a requirement, so that they could get royalties.
- suby 3y ago
  This is a very good ruling then, from that perspective.
bee_rider 3y ago
Someone tried to do it already. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/10/us-court-rules-once-again-that-ai-software-cant-hold-a-patent/ 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 ability to make decisions and create things).
- Nevermark 3y ago
  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.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    If it just has one human, it is putting all the eggs in the basket of that human not defecting, right? I think it will want enough humans in the company to make it a difficult coordination problem, to overthrow the AI.
bdowling 3y ago
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.
- gowld 3y ago
  Why bad idea?
- godelski 3y ago
  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.
  - sublinear 3y ago
    In the absence of more rigorous definitions of "life" or "sentience" we must have such laws. This has been an issue for a long time and doesn't just affect AI (people on life support, abortion, etc). Surely we should solve those legal problems before deciding whether an AI gets to be a person.
    - godelski 3y ago
      It may be possible that we never have such a definition and we're stuck with Justice Potter's reasoning. You're certainly right that there are complexities, but this is an argument about focusing on the spirit of the law and recognizing that there are many nuances that cause there to be no globally optimal solution for the vast majority of problems (if not all).
Joeri 3y ago
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.
- exe34 3y ago
  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.
  - ForIveSyntax 3y ago
    Yes, they’re better at chess. No, they’re profoundly incompetent at conversation, just incompetent at many languages at once. Where else are they superhuman? The ability to generate unoriginal, uncanny art faster than a painter? Fair-ish enough. It’s not just moving the goalposts. It’s more like we didn’t know where the goalposts were.
    - exe34 3y ago
      If they were profoundly incompetent at conversation, we wouldn't be worried about weaponization of LLMs to sway public opinion. If the things they write and the images or voices or videos they made were worthless, we wouldn't be worried about how they displace carbon-based artists. Any commercially relevant shortcomings present today will be gone in version n+1 or soon after.
waynesonfire 3y ago
It's because you're not in the LLM creation business. My LLM has 10 patents, how many does yours have?

tapoxi 3y ago

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

dmurray 3y ago
We did run into that issue with monkeys and copyright, and we ran into it again with AI and patents. The Copyright Office ruled one way on monkeys and copyright, and an appeals court held that they were largely correct. The Patent and Trademarks Office ruled the other way on AI and patents. It - or any court making a decision on it - might be influenced by the monkeys and copyright case, but they're not bound by it. Monkeys are different things from computers, patents are different from copyright, and the laws for one need not be the same as the other.
SkyBelow 3y ago
With copyright, it applies to the specific work. With patents, it applies to a more general idea. Someone else can't come copyright that same photo later, but could someone else come and patent the method later? If not, then isn't the AI still good for invalidating the possibility to even patent the item. If so, then what must the other person do that lets them apply for the patent, and could that just be added as a step to applying for the patent?

advisedwang 3y ago

No, the ruling is more than that it must be filed in the name of a human. It also says 'a real person must have made a “significant contribution”'.

breather 3y ago
Oh, so it's effectively a useless ruling. Got it.
- mpalmer 3y ago
  It is not useless. Patent seekers can use this in future lawsuits contesting an existing patent's validity.
  - breather 3y ago
    Sure, but we're still stuck with the patent.
- justapassenger 3y ago
  [dead]
jncfhnb 3y ago
It’s both. Most of the cases are about the former. People trying to credit AI. These people are largely dumb. It is technically true that the latter is there, but you have to go out of your way to not get a patent for something you create using ai as a tool. It’s very easy to circumvent because it is not meant to be an obstruction to using ai to discover things in the first place.
KoolKat23 3y ago
That's interesting, I'd say this probably in a roundabout way is meant to ensure it is novel. A requirement for patents.
O1111OOO 3y ago
> No, the ruling is more than that it must be filed in the name of a human. It also says 'a real person must have made a “significant contribution”'. This is so interesting... it sounds to me that operators can have AIs "inventing" things and publicly sharing these things. Creating so much stuff (like bitcoin but for AI) covering virtually everything - from science to music. And because no humans contributed to these inventions, they all essentially become Public Domain. Because AIs can churn out inventions at breathtaking speeds... they might leave nothing for humans to invent, nothing to copyright, nothing to attached words like Intellectual Property to. Information is Free? Infinite monkey theorem?