AI, PATENTS, AND PERSONHOOD

This article was spotted and shared by a regular reader here who wishes to remain "initials anonymous," so I will simply say thank you to "X" for spotting this one and sharing it with us, because if you're been following the AI and robot stories, you'll be aware that it's already been proposed that robots be recognized as legal persons. Indeed, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Catherine Austin Fitts, has suggested in some of her recent Solari Report quarterly wrap-ups, that what is really behind all the transgenderism nonsense is really about recognizing robots as persons, so that any work or labor they perform can be taxed.

Well, now you can add AI to this legal tangle, as people in the U.K. are now trying to argue that ideas created by AI algorithms are patentable:

Scientists Are Trying to List AI as the Inventor on a New Patent

Note the implications of these remarks from the article:

Scientists and lawyers from the U.K. are fighting with patent offices in three separate countries over who deserves credit for new inventions churned out by artificial intelligence algorithms.

Legal experts and American engineer Stephen Thaler, the inventor of an algorithm named Dabus AI, have filed for patents in the U.K., Europe, and the U.S. in Dabus’ “name,” arguing that the algorithm deserves proper attribution for designing new products, according to BBC News. But the patent offices have pushed back, as traditionally legal rights go to humans. It’s an unusual disagreement that illustrates how our legal systems are unprepared to accommodate new, emerging technologies.

The scientists believe that Dabus AI deserves legal credit as the inventor of the fractal-based easier-to-grasp food container that it designed, as well as a lamp that it built to flicker in a pattern that mirrors brain activity. Then, legal rights over the creation should go to whomever actually built the algorithm in question.

As it stands, the person behind Dabus AI has no legal claim to a patent on the algorithm’s inventions.

...

The problem with their case, though, is 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. (Emphasis added)

As "X" put it in the email accompanying the article: this implies that if any patent rights were to be granted under U.K. patent law, that it would probably be via some route recognizing the AI algorithm as an extension of the human person behind its design and use, and that in turn implies an extension de jure in re (in the reality of law) of the notion of personhood. We're thus in uncharted territory of jurisprudence here, since this idea is rather different than the idea of the corporate persona ficta in law. The alternative, i.e., that an AI itself, gains for itself a right in law to patent inventions, would seem to confer a legal recognition of its personhood, and this too becomes highly problematic, for this would seem to allow an AI to pursue litigation. But how would that work in an actual court? Would it have the same rights to represent itself pro se or in the standard way via legal counsel (and for that matter, could that counsel itself be an AI?) And if this route is pursued, would it allow several AIs to form a corporation?

But let's really walk to the end of the high octane speculation twig here. What might be the agenda behind this? I suspect that if there is an agenda, it's disclosed by the first alternative of the extension of personhood to include the instrumentalities of its invention,  i.e., by extending the doctrine of person to include any AI tools or agencies it uses to create an idea, the door could be opened to the idea that any conscious or sentient entity - not necessarily human - could be behind the idea of such extension of the doctrine of person in law. Thus, we're chin-to-chin with Elon Musk's idea that AI might "transduce" a conscious or sentient entity into a computer network. If it passed any legal tests likely to be evolved to meet such legal definitions, patents could be applied for and gained.

Whatever is going on here, one thing - mentioned by "X" in the email accompanying the article - is possible: whoever is behind this newest legal wrangle must have some money behind the effort, and a precedent-setting case is being currently argued. And given the similarity of British law to Canadian, America, Australian, Indian, and South African law, this precedent setting case's implications will not be restricted to the U.K.

See you on the flip side...

 

Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

42 Comments

  1. Robert Barricklow on August 23, 2019 at 11:12 am

    Reading the comments.
    WOW!
    They want to charge people w/murder if AI goes down?
    Someone killed the power; and end up in the electric chair?



  2. DanaThomas on August 22, 2019 at 10:14 am

    This AI patent proposal sounds like just another way to milk more money from a naive population, perhaps paying it into a trust, the operations of which are protected by secrecy.



    • Ronin on August 22, 2019 at 1:38 pm

      Ding! Ding! My thoughts exactly.



    • zendogbreath on August 22, 2019 at 2:52 pm

      Worse than naive. Impotent.



  3. guitardave on August 22, 2019 at 6:57 am

    Had a dark thought this morning. What if one of the objectives of this utter non-sense is to threaten the smart Luddites with a murder rap when we figure out a quick and easy way to fry ‘ole Mr. AI’s circuits? Old style property damage laws aren’t enough of a deterrence….but a murder rap with a sentence of life in the gulag, or even death, might make the user of a mini, directional EMP device think twice before pulling the trigger. They know how vulnerable their toys are…



    • OrigensChild on August 22, 2019 at 8:16 am

      GD: I’m right there with you on this one. If granted personhood any device with an AI system will can now be victims of theft, murder, homocide, etc. But there is another part of it too. Their destruction can now be justification for war–both internal in soft forms and external with real weapons. They will also be numbered among the body count in various black operations. Insidious doesn’t even begin to describe this monster.



    • OrigensChild on August 22, 2019 at 8:18 am

      There is a comment coming in moderation. I know the problem. I found it after the post. Silly kismet has a serious phobia with a critical Greek root word. Some AI systems have less intelligence than a bag of hammers…



      • Robert Barricklow on August 22, 2019 at 11:13 am

        OC
        Exactly.
        AI is dumb as a fencepost.
        The question is has the holy grail of AI[general intelligence] been developed? And if so, when?



  4. goshawks on August 22, 2019 at 1:52 am

    By the way, apparently there is going to be a Matrix 4 . It will be interesting to see how they ‘track’ any of the current Zeitgist on AI and personhood.
    https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/whoa-keanu-reeves-carrie-anne-moss-sign-on-to-star-in-the-matrix-4/



  5. Robert Barricklow on August 22, 2019 at 12:49 am

    If there was any doubt about “them” pushing the nonsense that robots are living beings:
    https://rt.com/news/466907-youtube-censors-robot-fights-cruelty/

    Get Real!
    It’s getting downright disgusting!
    Whatta gull-of-bull, whatta nin-cow-poop…



  6. Pierre on August 21, 2019 at 10:58 pm

    oops, rocket jet booties for astroboy.



  7. Pierre on August 21, 2019 at 10:58 pm

    Not sure, given that making a bow and arrow requires a licence in Australia, and it is illegal for possesss the algorithm to 3d print a gun, if this is Vorbotten….
    https://archive.org/details/Hunting_with_a_Bow_and_Arrow_Saxton_Pope?q=%22saxton+pope%22
    and don’t start me on the boomerangs and woomeras and pointed sticks.

    Anyhow, with rights come responsibilities. Will the original ‘creator’ of the AI trajectory be responsible for all the BAD stuff, or is it all just more Mickey Mouse copyrite and bringing everyone, everything, into the Lawful Levitical fold.

    Maybe they will need something like IsraeHell for all the robots to go to in times of trouble and persecution, like getting caught out once the Luddites catch onto them. Astroboy stuck on the astroturf, rocket jets, man, gunna be a long long time (/ end rant).



  8. goshawks on August 21, 2019 at 9:51 pm

    I am going to go with ZDB’s comment: “In the overall scheme of things, sure does look like an overwhelming overpowering seriously well informed entity is working hard and fast to simulate, replicate and replace us with their own version of us. And to parasitize us in the process.”
    https://gizadeathstar.com/2019/08/ai-patents-and-personhood/#comment-91849

    I have written before on how technology merely produces inferior versions of humanity’s latent abilities. Electronic communication replaces telepathy. Constructing equipment replaces psychokinesis. Medicine replaces (truly) healing powers. On and on. Viewed this way, it appears that ‘an overwhelming overpowering seriously well informed entity’ is working very patiently over the millennia to suppress what we natively are .

    Once humanity has been ‘conditioned’ away from their birthright, they become slaves to technology. They literally cannot survive without it. It becomes a hive-mind kind of ‘collective’ thing – like an unconscious version of The Borg…

    This situation is much like the early scene in The Matrix where Morpheus says, “The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” Obviously, there are many ‘Agent Smith’ types in the world, furthering their Matrix. And not too many ‘free human’ types.

    Within The Matrix metaphor, it is time (past time) to start bending your own spoons…



    • zendogbreath on August 21, 2019 at 10:48 pm

      I’d settle for a little astoundingly good health here and there.



  9. William Wright on August 21, 2019 at 9:18 pm

    We speak of Native Indigenous people and their life and views, yet we need look no further than are own regions to see a very successful template of how to dispossess a culture from its traditional roots. The war on Natives has never stopped, it’s more of a underground Cold War nowadays with occasional flare-ups such as Standing Rock. The point being – they are here, have always been here, and are still a big problem for the Government.



    • zendogbreath on August 21, 2019 at 10:46 pm

      Which says something about scorched earth policies and how effective they are. Current military professors argue that it’s effective enough. Ishi from Saxton Pope’s book sighted below is a case in point. Part of how Pope and his hunting partner recognized Ishi’s superior life skills was that he was impossible to beat in the hide and seek game that is hunting. That’s how he survived so long in the California forests throughout those decades of scorched earth policies by the empire. Granted he wasn’t likely to be so successful as to start up a new family, village, civilization and on…….. But his survival was in itself proof of superior (and arguably invaluable) knowledge and skill.



  10. marcos toledo on August 21, 2019 at 7:44 pm

    In the end, the so-called master is the most enslaved in the slaveocracy. And will never realize their situation ironically.



  11. OrigensChild on August 21, 2019 at 3:52 pm

    When I survey the past 200 years of technical prowess I find the whole situation artificial. Technology is a wonderful thing, but its misuse is catastrophic. Western civilization has lost its mind. Granting personhood to AI engines and synthetic beings makes as much sense as owning the land, the oceans, the air, the sun, the moon, the stars–indeed, everything else. Others have stated this conforms to the trans-humanist agenda for universal slavery–so I need not go there. I’ll save my comments for the idea of an economic system totally dependent on technological advancement alone to define culture. This idea is again a thesis developed by Dr. Farrell across the canon of his works–and its an idea worth repeating in a different form.

    It’s true that the Native Americans never were a technologically sophisticated group of people when compared to the West’s industrial prowess, but they were far more sophisticated in their understanding of how man interfaced with the planet and its environment. Perhaps some of them were intellectually more sophisticated in the mechanics of taking advantage of nature’s bounty without stripping the planet of its resources. Perhaps they learned lessons the hard way and adjusted to their problem accordingly. In the struggle for supremacy in those culture wars at the heart of US history, I often wondered if the technologically advanced civilization won the battle but lost the intellectual war. Science, engineering, mathematics, politics, economics and law are wonderful tools–but they are only tools. If they are not held in check by a superior intellectual model, a model that takes into account our relationship with the planet, everything suffers needlessly. How can a civilization sustain itself when it embraces technology and bends all other tools to service this quest as the primary engine of its success? I’m reminded of the movie “Last of the Mohicans”, which framed this clash of ideas perfectly throughout the movie, and ending with the Huron chief’s question at the end: “For generations our Huron fathers often asked the question: now that the white man has come to these lands, what are the Huron to do?” From their perspective they saw the technical superiority of these immigrants, but they also saw their limited intellectual prowess with respect the planet and to each other. Their economic quest to own everything via technology for the advancement of their version of human culture eventually reduces the value of nature and community to zero. In a zero sum game the winners lose also. It’s as if the wisdom of some native peoples that guided their trepidation to technology wasn’t naiveté nor ignorance nor poverty of imagination, but one based on ancient memory. Perhaps they knew one is not prepared to embrace technology until one has developed a sufficient holistic view to understand how to build and use it with minimal consequence to ecology and community. Dr. Farrell identified the heart of the problem in Babylon’s Banksters with his discussion of the values derived from competition between two different economic systems: the “corn” god vs the “blood” god–and the curious legend of the latter’s arrival on this continent by a demon-priest. Technology can be used to service either, but the intellectual sophistication required to use it correctly must be sympathetic to, and synergised with, the former view of “god” if a zero sum game is to be avoided. Until Moloch’s legacy is exorcised from our Western intellectual tradition, economic theory coupled to the race for technology leads us to a zero sum game. The end-game leads to the human race existing in locust form–consuming the galaxy and the universe without some kind of intervention.



    • Robert Barricklow on August 21, 2019 at 4:11 pm

      Excellent points OC. In my minds eye they were becoming one with nature. That is, one w/the universe; and as such, were being w/the spirit in communication as well as spirit.
      Crazy Horse really exemplified their spirit; and never allowed a picture of himself to be taken[technology was an enemy spirit not to be tolerated one dam[n] iota.
      Now “they”[enemy spirit] want to build a HUGE record breaking statue of his imagined likeness.



    • Robert Barricklow on August 21, 2019 at 4:17 pm

      The economy, like that of the Native Americans, should be based on “real wealth; which is of, for, and by the living Earth.
      Not the current system based upon a dead rock[the third planet from the sun]; where minerals, oil, jewels, and the like are wealth. Not the species going extinct; because. they’re not gold, or oil, or jewels.
      Those living species are the real wealth;
      beyond any dollarized measure.



      • Robert Barricklow on August 21, 2019 at 4:22 pm

        … and ironically, our living is directly tied to theirs.

        Technology is not life; nor is a corporation a person.
        “They” are insane and/or inhuman
        to even begin to fashion such a notion.



    • zendogbreath on August 21, 2019 at 5:31 pm

      Makes one want to learn to hunt.

      Hunting with the Bow and Arrow Paperback – April 27, 2015
      by Saxton Pope (Author)

      “It is difficult to imagine the great wilderness that existed in the United States before the modern age, and yet we are only 100-some years removed from a land that was densely populated — with forests and animals. Saxton Pope had the benefit of contact with one of the last members of the Yahi tribe in California, and from him he learned and perfected the art of bow hunting. His incomparable 1922 guide, Hunting with the Bow and Arrow, reflects both the close relationship Pope shared with that Yahi tribesman and a bygone era that is today emulated by the Pope and Young Club.”



      • zendogbreath on August 21, 2019 at 5:33 pm

        The irony of it is Saxton Pope and his hunting friend who found Ishi became his owners as it were. They found him hiding out at a time when they could have sold him for a bounty. Instead they recognized his superiority as a hunter and apprenticed to him for years.



  12. zendogbreath on August 21, 2019 at 1:51 pm

    It’s warfare by another means. If AI is already being used in autonomous UAV kill decisions (and all indications are that it is) then this is just an extension into the legal system. A system where living persons can be attacked legally as well as physically. Eminent domain much? Declarations of psychologically unfit made into wards of state much? Children taken from parents by DCFS much?



    • zendogbreath on August 21, 2019 at 3:00 pm

      In the overall scheme of things, sure does look like an overwhelming overpowering seriously well informed entity is working hard and fast to simulate, replicate and replace us with their own version of us. And to parasitize us in the process. Which is curious. Reminds me of Asian cultures who to this day try to domestic will species for livestock. It’s an agricultural error along the lines of feeding herbivores cannibalistically. Raising civets in cages for meat is the first idea that comes to mind. What a bad idea.

      In the process of replication and replacement is the AI going to include our attitude toward such ideas?



      • Robert Barricklow on August 21, 2019 at 3:49 pm

        Yes ZDB. It does look like an extremely long game.

        I sometimes imagine “them” as galactic seeds, that can first bear 3D-life; whose fruits then proceed to do what they are interned and programmed to do.
        Is AI but one fruit being harvested from those galactic vast solar winds, that are spreading those kinds of seeds?
        Galactic onions bearing sinister fruits, that appear innocent and, in some cases, life giving?



        • Robert Barricklow on August 21, 2019 at 3:57 pm

          By “onions”, I mean they’re many sinister levels and dimension to this parasitic like form that engineers it own hosts.



          • Robert Barricklow on August 21, 2019 at 4:00 pm

            [life form]
            This keyboard/internet interface is [not/”like” form].



          • Robert Barricklow on August 21, 2019 at 4:04 pm

            Needless to say, even the above did not conform exactly to what I wrote.
            What an purposed & intended nuisance,
            to continually reread, and even then find
            it didn’t take as intended.

            … speaking of AI bots.



          • zendogbreath on August 21, 2019 at 5:21 pm

            try cut and paste before posting Robert. then post again with small variations to the original by using the cut and paste. have run into similar before. it’s an odd glitch of the system.



      • zendogbreath on August 21, 2019 at 10:39 pm

        that was “domesticate wild species” oops



    • Robert Barricklow on August 21, 2019 at 3:36 pm

      Good points ZDB.
      The legal system; one killing machine under law,
      in both bodies and/or spirit.



  13. Robert Barricklow on August 21, 2019 at 12:18 pm

    Only really one thing or two you have to know about robots.
    CONTROL & CHEAP Labor.
    So they’ll pay taxes[get that Bankster interest], passports[not quite as liquid as digital money], neither a he or she[so language 21st Century perfect], etc., etc.

    Oh God!
    AI patents.
    Next thing you know they’ll be patenting life.
    Oops! They’ve been there, done that.
    Ironically, non-life AI[brute-force-stupid; until it tackles general intelligence/which “they’ would keep secret]
    will patent life[which came first, AI or life?]

    Let’s remember, if its general intelligence AI:
    What generation is it. Because such an AI could redesign its next generation that’s, super-fast & much better. Then that generation will be even faster & better, ad infinitum.
    At the same time: on a parallel exponential curve will be its patents of “life”.

    AI won’t worry about a legal future, because AI is the future[including, the legal future]. Humans[AI-designed?] will be judged by non-life 24/7/365 cheap labor.
    We know where that storyline’s going.

    I can see a future conversation now/
    Whose your attorney? Is it AI?

    Because, you know, your judge is going to be AI.
    Both of them came from the AI firm:
    Duey, Cheetum, & Howe.

    Of course, like our election$, the winner will be, who hacked last, before the announcement of who won?
    [an AI or real human] Shade of PKD’s,
    Do Electric Sheep Dream of Androids

    Not only is the money behind this funny; the people behind it, are certified puppets from the funny farms.



  14. Joseph Aiello on August 21, 2019 at 11:22 am

    My first thought was the Blade Runner movie.



  15. Bryce on August 21, 2019 at 10:42 am

    Folks, this dovetails exactly w/this post. This young lady is every bit as talented as Polly.
    I posted this on the community forum. Note: in the vid tptb fear the Carnicom Institute.
    Add to this, my bud has teamed up w/2 Dr.s & an attorney fighting the smart meters. The 2 dr.s are seeing clusters of these symptoms & treating themselves exactly as recommended in the vid.
    Looks to me, aside from genocide, they’re going to patent us.
    youtube.com/watch?time_continue=623&v=9V1U_hnxEjo



    • zendogbreath on August 21, 2019 at 1:58 pm

      Thank you. Appreciate another good link.

      More curious about you docs and their progress on smart meters. Please do tell us more.



    • zendogbreath on August 21, 2019 at 2:55 pm

      Doc, you might want to break your rule of not watching video links on this one. Dana Ashlie is outlining a perspective you’ve skirted a few times for the overall logic and plan of action for all the geo-engineered changes to atmosphere and emf of the planet.



    • Robert Barricklow on August 21, 2019 at 3:51 pm

      Might we already be under some off-world’s patent?



  16. Detroit Dirt Bikes on August 21, 2019 at 10:40 am

    ” . . . and for that matter, could that counsel itself be an AI? ” Thanks a lot, Dr. Farrell. Thought I had finally wrapped my mind around the worst possible Orwellian dystopic future, but the horror of the concept of A.I. lawyers exceeds the level of dread I can apprehend.



  17. Detroit Dirt Bikes on August 21, 2019 at 10:10 am

    Initials Anonymous (I.A.) anagram for Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). Coincidence?



  18. Matthew on August 21, 2019 at 7:32 am

    I conjecture that the best thing for humanity (and the planet) is the dismantling and destruction of the Internet and all “wi/fi” cellular devices. This experiment shows conclusively the “complete degradation” of humanity through technological “innovation” and “scientific advancement” that in my opinion is nothing more than a derivative of “black magick”, “alchemy”, “esotericism”, and “shadow technology” from an advanced (but extinct) past civilization (think Antediluvian Era/Atlantis). Truthfully, the only time I am on the Internet is at work (as I am being inundated by EMFs via all the wi-fi devices “communicating” with each other via the “Internet of Things”. Everyday I know I am being slowly “microwaved” in this building…sigh). I digress and will leave by saying, “The Neo Tower of Babel” (i.e., the Internet) needs destroyed in order to reset and “save” the last vestiges of humanity’s soul. I wonder where the true “core” of the Internet is located (methinks deep down in the Atlantic Ocean)…If this does not happen, humanity will be a “novel” memory for those that “observe” the history of universal happenings.



  19. anakephalaiosis on August 21, 2019 at 6:10 am

    Corporate personhood, and flesh tent slavery, spell Roman empire.

    Aproned bureaucrats are nuts and bolts, in papal war machines.

    Ups-a-daisy, I just fell into my empty mind. It was so silent, that air was windless.



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