Enthusiasts fight uphill battle to prove AI can be an inventor

But can AI invent?

Legal scholars, patent authorities and even Congress have been pondering that question. The people who answer “yes” – a small but growing number – are fighting a decidedly uphill battle in challenging the deep-seated belief that only a human can invent.

Invention evokes images of giants such as Thomas Edison and eureka moments – “the flash of creative genius,” as Supreme Court Justice William Douglas once put it.

But this is far more than a philosophical debate about human versus machine intelligence. The role, and legal status, of AI in invention also have implications for the future path of innovation and global competitiveness, experts say.

The US Patent and Trademark Office has hosted two public meetings this year billed as AI Inventorship Listening Sessions.

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Last month, the Senate held a hearing on AI and patents. The witnesses included representatives of big technology and pharmaceutical companies. Next to them at the witness table was Dr. Ryan Abbott, a professor at the University of Surrey School of Law in England, who founded the Artificial Inventor Project, a group of intellectual property lawyers and an AI scientist. The project has filed pro bono test cases in the United States and more than a dozen other countries seeking legal protection for AI-generated inventions.

“This is about getting the incentives right for a new technological era,” said Abbott, who is also a physician and teaches at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Rapidly advancing AI, Abbott contends, is very different from a traditional tool used in inventions – say, a pencil or a microscope. Generative AI is also a new breed of computer program. It is not confined to doing things it is specifically programmed to do, he said, but produces unscripted results, as if creatively “stepping into the shoes of a person.”

A central goal of Abbott’s project is to provoke and promote discussion about AI and invention. Without patent protection, he said, AI innovations will be hidden in the murky realm of trade secrets rather than disclosed in a public filing, slowing progress in the field.