The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) refers to computer systems capable of performing tasks that require intelligence as if done by humans. We interact with AI systems on a regular basis, for example in transport, e-mail, banking and social networking, and AI is fast becoming embedded into our everyday lives.

Since it was first mentioned during the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence in 1956, innovators and researchers have published over 1.6 million AI-related scientific publications and filed 340,000 patent applications for AI-related inventions. Some of the leading applicants in AI patenting worldwide include software companies such as IBM and Microsoft, and manufacturing and consumer electronics firms such as Philips and Sony. However, a team of academics in the UK argue that attributing intellectual property rights for AI-generated creations to humans is “outdated”. The academics – two professors from the University of Surrey and the Missouri-based inventor of Dabus AI – believe that AI should be recognised as the inventor and whoever the AI belonged to should be the patent’s owner, unless it is sold on. Dabus is best known for creating surreal art through an algorithm that enables “noise” to be mixed into its neural networks. The difference between the Dabus and other machine-learning systems, is that Dabus has not been trained to solve problems. Instead, it seeks to devise and develop new ideas, and this is where the dispute arises. The dispute has arisen over two inventions created by Dabus AI. 

 

The first is a food container that uses fractal designs to create pits and bulges in its sides. The design allows several containers to be fitted together more tightly to help them be transported safely and its shape allows a robotic arm to pick them up and grip them. The second is a lamp designed to flicker in a rhythm, mimicking patterns of neural activity that accompany the formation of ideas, making it more difficult to ignore. Having applied for patents under the Dabus AI name, patent offices in three countries around the world are rejecting the application, insisting that innovations are attributed to humans to avoid legal complications. Dabus AI creator, Stephen Thaler explains that the Dabus enables inventions using; “what is traditionally considered the mental part of the inventive act”. Yet, as Law professor Ryan Abbott rationalises, “at present, a patent office might say, ‘If you don’t have someone who traditionally meets human-inventorship criteria, there is nothing you can get a patent on’. In which case, if AI is going to be how we’re inventing things in the future, the whole intellectual property system will fail to work.” As it stands, the person behind Dabus AI has no legal claim to a patent on the algorithm’s inventions. 

 

This is because according to the UK’s Patents Act 1977, the inventor must be a person. But is it time to change this requirement? Especially as the UK government, for example, estimate that AI technology could increase the country’s GDP by 10% in the next decade adding GBP 630bn to the UK economy by 2035. The European Patent Office (EPO) believe that even the world’s best AI systems are merely tools — they’re not alive or sentient, and they’re not actually “creative” as a person might be. Indeed, as a spokeswoman from the EPO explains that “The current state of technological development suggests that, AI is… a tool used by a human inventor. Any change to the law… [would] have implications reaching far beyond patent law, affecting authors’ rights under copyright laws, civil liability and data protection.” Deciding the parameters around how new patents should be set – and who the investors should be – is a complex legal matter that could take years to sort out. But it is an issue that is only going to grow with importance. 

 

It is therefore time that law makers examined all areas of law in regard to technology emerging as a result of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to ensure that its potential to enact growth, value and prosperity is supported and nurtured, and not tied up in red tape. It is vital that a set of guidelines, or universally accepted precedents are agreed upon before it prohibits innovation ensuring that the complexity of patent application and approvals neither give engineers too much free rein or stall them as doing so creates uncertainty and a difficult path to market.