The Ability to Chase Down Our Dreams. Inventive Step and Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

In the present technological framework, the AI that could participate in the creative processes, is characterized by being what can be defined as artificial narrow intelligence, which is specifically dedicated to certain tasks. The technological innovations produced by the AI are based (a) on a preliminary phase presided by man with a (more or less extensive) address and stimulation of the machine; (b) a subsequent stage of processing the results and/or directed to carry out the required tasks, performed entirely by the machine and its artificial intelligence algorithm, totally unrelated to any intervention by the operator and completely opaque to the possibility to disclose the methods by which the result was obtained (so-called black box); and (c) a later and final moment in which the human operator, using the AI (in a more or less structured way) examines and selects the innovative results provided by the machine. The point of equilibrium between patent system in its general lines and innovations produced by the AI is precisely directed to identify whether this technical possibility of improving the creative phases still leaves room for stages chaired by man that are not directly ordinary. Consistent with this technological framework, the analysis on the presence of the patent requirements can (and must) be focused only on these phases subject to human intervention. These moments, in fact, are always characterized by being i) endowed with wide space of choice by the human operator in sorting the information to be given to the machine; ii) shaped on the basis of re-search projects that require economic investments and technical-scientific competences not easily to obtain.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, patent, inventive step, novelty, non-obviousness, intellectual property, inventive activity