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6 May 2016Patents

Awe and anxiety: what artificial intelligence means for IP

Since the term artificial intelligence (AI) was coined by computer scientist John McCarthy in the 1950s, studies on the subject have been mostly left to those working in academia or film makers and novelists dreaming up a global apocalypse unwittingly engineered by humans.

The rapid development of AI technology in the last decade has changed that, however. AI technology is present in millions of smartphone devices in circulation across the globe. More people have been pushed into the AI conversation as its disruptive potential threatens to affect and even replace jobs in the services and creative sectors. Even the legal industry is vulnerable to the latest advancements in AI technology.

In 2015, the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) held a debate at the Science Museum in London on the question of whether a patent will be filed and granted without human intervention within the next 25 years. A 140-strong audience heard from people working in private practice, authors on the subject and a representative from the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO). After a lengthy and stimulating debate on the question, the audience voted 80 to 60 that a patent would be granted without human input.

On the face of it, it’s hard to imagine a machine inventing a new product and preparing a written application. And on the examining side, it’s currently inconceivable that a machine could process the patent claims, assess the novelty of the covered technology and apply the existing statute.

It’s also difficult to imagine such a debate resulting in that vote ten years ago. But in the context of the rapid change over the last decade, some are starting to see the point of technological singularity—the moment when AI machines self-improve without human input—on the horizon.

In 1993, now retired San Diego State University professor Vernor Vinge noted in an oft-cited academic essay, “The Coming Technological Singularity”, that within the next 30 years a “creation of greater than human intelligence will occur”. Four years after making that prediction, IBM’s computer Deep Blue defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in a game of chess.

"There is always going to be a limit to how effective an AI source is going to be, because ultimately the lawyer is responsible to the client for the output."

In 2014, DeepMind Technologies (now called Google DeepMind) developed a machine that achieved the highest points score in several Atari video games, finding ways to complete the games that were previously unknown to the original programmers. Last year, AI technology defeated the European champion at Go, the ancient Chinese board game, and in early March Google’s AlphaGo computer outwitted the world champion.

Legal services by machine

Proof that AI is not restricted to games and the otherwise trivial was law firm Dentons’ announcement last year that it is training the Ross Intelligence machine to provide legal services. Developed by NextLaw Labs, Ross Intelligence is advertised as a tool that lets lawyers “get back to being a lawyer”.

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