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Patent Rights for Algorithms; Deconflicting Romance; Programming Diversity in Finance
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GIULIO BONASERA
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Good morning. If an artificially intelligent system creates a new product, should patent offices recognize it as the inventor? Pro AI’s Jared Council examines that question in an article for the WSJ’s Journal Reports.
The issue is at the center of a case making its way through patent offices in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, one that business leaders and lawyers say is posing fundamental questions that could alter how centuries-old patent systems around the world operate.
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A legal drama for the age of AI. Stephen Thaler, founder and chief executive of Imagination Engines Inc. of St. Charles, Mo., created an AI system known as Dabus, short for “device for the autonomous bootstrapping of unified sentience.”
Dabus was built to ingest data about a range of subjects and conceive ideas for products it hadn’t seen before. Dabus, Mr. Thaler says, created a specially shaped container lid designed for robotic gripping and a flashlight system for attracting human attention in emergencies. But the patent laws in some of the jurisdictions where the applications were filed recognize only “natural persons” or “individuals” as inventors.
The group behind the patent application is led by Ryan Abbott, a law and health-sciences professor at the University of Surrey in the U.K. “If I teach my Ph.D. student that and they go on to make a final complex idea, that doesn’t make me an inventor on their patent, so it shouldn’t with a machine,” says Dr. Abbott.
The group also includes four patent lawyers from the U.S., U.K., Germany and Israel. Between October 2018 and August 2019, the team filed patent applications around the world listing Dabus as the inventor.
The $100 million question. Why does any of this matter? Let’s say a company’s AI system discovers a blockbuster drug compound but another party claims it isn’t protectable by patent. says Philip Albert, a partner and patent lawyer with Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, who isn’t involved in this case. People will be less likely to employ AI as an agent of discovery and innovation if there is no way to patent the outcomes.
“It’s going to be really critical to have this question answered,” Mr. Albert says. “We like to resolve these questions before we get into a $100 million dispute.”
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Manufacturers are expected to use nearly four million robots world-wide by 2022. Singapore currently has the highest density of industrial robots, but their use is growing fastest in China.
Writing for the Journal, Michael Totty explores the conflicting views on how developments in robotics and other branches of AI will affect our jobs, our health and our existence in general.
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Researchers developed an algorithm that identified fights in progress and patterns that would lead to an argument within minutes. PHOTO: GIACOMO BAGNARA
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Researchers are developing algorithms to prevent arguments. Couples fight, but artificial intelligence might help reduce the number of arguments they have, reports Aili McConnon for the WSJ.
University engineers and psychologists are developing AI systems that use speech patterns and physiological, acoustic and linguistic data from wearable devices and smartphones to detect conflict.
The researchers believe that algorithms trained to work with such data eventually could predict conflict and offer an intervention before a situation escalates. A partner who is highly stressed, for example, might receive a text message saying a fight is imminent, with a suggestion to pause the conversation and take 10 minutes to meditate, says Theodora Chaspari, an assistant professor in computer science and engineering at Texas A&M University.
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ABB, Texas Medical working on robots to aid health-care staff. ABB and Houston’s Texas Medical Center entered into a partnership in which the industrial company’s YuMi collaborative robot would work with medical and lab staff, reports Barron's. Unlike big, heavy robots that weld car bodies, collaborative robots are smaller and designed to work safely with humans. Health care is a new market for robots, but ABB says there could be 60,000 medical, collaborative robots deployed by 2025.
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Making Wall Street more diverse. When Wall Street executives recruit talent, they habitually reach out for younger versions of themselves, Bloomberg reports. Psychologists have tagged this practice the “like-me” bias. However, more financial firms, including Houlihan Lokey, Lazard, Moelis and PJT Partners, have started using predictive algorithms to sort applications to find candidates likely to become top performers.
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Chatbot developer raises $8.4 million. Startup Xor, which is developing a chatbot platform for recruiters and job seekers, raised $8.4 million in a seed round, reports VentureBeat. The funding was led by SignalFire with participation from Gurtin Ventures and Twin VC.
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