The role of intellectual property in the intelligence explosion

This article examines the future legal challenges of Intellectual Property related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), highlighting the role that AI can play in increasing the pace and scope of innovation to meteoric levels. While AI is making inroads into intellectual property by improving search and retrieval efficiency into IP offices it poses some threats from which existing laws leave us unprotected. The article argues that the IP legal framework needs to adapt to thorny issues of ownership and patenting in the AI era if delay in reaping the benefits of this new age is to be avoided. 

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Summary

1. Introduction. Artificial Intelligence is not coming: is already here. – 2. How Intellectual Property is approaching AI. – 2.1 Protecting Artificial Intelligence systems. – 2.2. Protecting Artificial Intelligence creations: can non-humans qualify as inventors and authors? – 3. AI as a tool for IP. – 4. Conclusion.

Abstract

This article examines the future legal challenges of Intellectual Property related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), highlighting the role that AI can play in increasing the pace and scope of innovation to meteoric levels. Researchers are predicting AI will outperform humans in many activities in the next ten years, such as driving, writing and translating. Furthermore, they believe there is a 50% chance that AI will outperform humans in all tasks in 45 years and will even begin automating all human jobs in 120 years. This phenomenon of AI superiority to human workers has come to be referred to as an intelligence explosion. Advances in AI will transform modern life by reshaping all layers of today’s world: healthcare, education, industrial production, entertainment, transportation and even public policing. While AI is making inroads into Intellectual Property by improving search and retrieval efficiency into IP offices, on the other hand, it poses some threats from which existing laws leave us unprotected; all that, despite the fact that its rise has so far occurred in a regulatory vacuum. The potential for further rapid advances in AI technology has prompted cries of alarm from many sides, including some calls for government regulation, beginning with Intellectual Property law, as it is the first branch of law to deal with such innovations years before they will even see the light of day. Little has been done, however, to accommodate for this fact. The IP legal framework needs to adapt to the thorny issues of ownership and patenting in the AI era if we don’t wish to delay in reaping the benefits of this new age. And it must adapt quickly.

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