By James Brewer
Is the hype with which the latest AI products are being greeted unjustified, or are they the hyper-highway to massive advances for mankind? What to make of the Artificial Intelligence apps which have leapt to the centre of attention since being vigorously pitched to the public and investors since late 2022? Can they be viewed in law as independent creators with patented rights?
The multi-billion-dollar bets on AI by the tech giants have soared to such a level that animated debate has arisen as to the degree of efficacy and ethics embodied in their new products, and the field is sorely in need of measured analysis. Calm and reasoned assessments of misinformation in this field, and the pluses and minuses of AI capabilities are refreshingly and lucidly at the core of a timely book edited by Ruth Taplin, who is an economist and specialist in intellectual property rights, and she includes a rare spotlight on the impact of AI on the latter speciality.
The book casts its net wide, as outlined by its title: Artificial Intelligence, Intellectual Property, Cyber Risk and Robotics: A New Digital Age. Professor Taplin and a series of international experts contribute thought-provoking chapters, making for an essential primer in disentangling the commercial melee around AI, the potential of AI to bolster genuine social and economic advances, its dangerous misuse, and its central part in the geopolitical battles between nations.
At the core of the confusion are the fundamental questions that have reawakened in this new “digital age” as to whether robots can be truly independent of human beings in their decision-making and actions. Be assured, they absolutely do not have a mind of their own, insists Ruth Taplin.
She and her contributors examine the roots of AI and explain how it has contradictory functions: for instance, it can exacerbate cyber risk, but equally help defend against cyber-crime and be an unparalleled force for good.
They emphasise throughout that AI is not a living system, nor is it autonomous from human decisions. “To think otherwise can only lead to those with unsavoury intentions blaming a technology for ill deeds rather than the humans behind the decision making,” writes Dr Taplin, but “this does not mean that humans will refrain from working hard to imbue AI robots and learning machines with ever more human features and personas.”
She is adamant that AI, contrary to its portrayal in science fiction, is not a process that can develop or act beyond human programming and control: in fact, human input offers potential for serious mistakes and misguided actions. Are the new AI advancements genuine intelligence? It is important not to be dazzled by the ability of the likes of ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) to take part in human-style conversations, which is a long way from operating at the level of true human understanding.
This brings to the fore ethical implications for users and for wider society. AI algorithms are based on human opinions and biases that may be accurate or otherwise, with the potential to stereotype at the expense of objectivity. Human behaviour is unpredictable, and often capricious, so the imitation ‘game’ of robots learning from humans is both ad hoc and prone to error.
Victor Bartenev, a researcher on the natural science basis of the global economy, insists that “any AI system does not create new information – it only receives processes, stores and transmits huge arrays of binary electrical signals (the so-called ‘big data’) in accordance with an algorithm created by a programmer.” With the first computer-based AI systems, their capabilities were compared to human intelligence – but there is a fundamental difference between the human brain and the computer. Only living human systems can create new information.
In principle AI does not pose a threat to humanity because it does not create information, so it cannot completely replace humans. But the development and implementation of AI in weapons systems is a deadly threat to humanity – the inadequacy of AI in controlling a nuclear or space weapon is fraught with potential global catastrophe.
(Mr Bartenev notes that there are however speculations about AI’s ability to create artwork. Artists paint pictures and musicians compose music based on both algorithmic and creative behaviour. The presence of algorithmised content in music is especially obvious. The genetically encoded rhythmic contractions of the heart predetermined the cravings of ancient people for dancing, and then for music).
Professor Takashi Ikegami, a robotics expert, argues in the book that life comes before intelligence so that once robots become intelligent, they will be concerned with survival and protecting themselves, rather than destroying human beings – a reading that will come as a relief to anyone mesmerised by the imagined innate malign power of robots. So much for the notion that ‘killer’ robots will one day turn on their human creators.
Especially valuable is the book’s analysis of the oft neglected and criminally flouted underlying role of intellectual property rights. The book assesses all the related dilemmas: robots are created by humans for humans, so can they be granted patents and ownership rights, and viewed in law as independent creators? How can an AI machine that is granted a patent right make moral and ethical decisions to stop widespread abuse of the patented product? Can a robot be sued for infringement of intellectual property rights? The courts have yet to pronounce uniformly on these major questions.
The contributors explain how AI will impact labour: it will make for job losses but serve the need for retaining people for newer areas of work such as renewable energy. Prof Rodney Brooks, a robotics entrepreneur, takes a pragmatic perspective, viewing robots as useful assistants for people in their old age, such as in the example of a vacuum cleaner he created.
Again and again, the book’s contributors show how nuanced is the development of AI and how we must resist viewing it as robots taking over the earth. The book shows that the roots of AI may be found in the fundamental efforts to understand machine learning developed at Cambridge University and at the Bletchley Park code-breaking operation by the brilliant computer scientist Alan Turing (1912-1954).
Emeritus Professor K Vela Velupillai, a pioneer in computable economics, relates that in one of the early modern forays into computer chess, Alan Turing maintained that “chess must be allowed to have contact with human beings” in actual situations, and machines can learn intelligently from games. Prof Velupillai quotes approvingly the words of an advocate in the 1950s of AI, the US professor of psychology and computer science Herbert Simon and his colleagues, who said “chess is the intellectual game par excellence… If one could devise a successful chess machine, one would seem to have penetrated to the core of human intellectual endeavour.”
AI is having a profound effect on geopolitics by means of cyber warfare, conventional warfare, the theft of intellectual property rights and data. Its use will determine the future of the economy, society, not least in terms of food security and the sustainability of rainforests, wetlands, and wildlife habitats. Professor Taplin is enthusiastic that AI can be used to good effect in climate change mitigation, such as helping lower carbon emissions; in data processing to assist in ending severe air pollution; and to reduce the time and cost of producing pharmaceutical drugs.
Intense cyber-attacks first occurred in the banking and finance sectors as these represent both money and power. The use and misuse of AI is furthering the risks in those areas, and in shipping, energy, and corporate sectors large and small.
Professor Taplin warns – as she did in her previous book Cyber Risk, Intellectual Property Theft and Cyber Warfare – that weaknesses are often the greatest when organisations involve third parties such as suppliers. AI where not supervised by human quality controllers can allow cyber-attacks to enter the systems of companies and government organisations – yet AI data processing can find patterns in huge amounts of data that will deter cyber-attacks by allowing only legitimate emails access to an enterprise’s systems.
The future challenges of reining in tech giants and the unregulated use of AI are complex and numerous. Professor Taplin says that tech groups are fully behind open access and open-source ways of ultimately benefitting themselves, while undermining inventors’ and creators’ rights to protection of intellectual property or nation states’ rights to security. Regulation globally of AI is sadly lacking – Europe is ahead of most countries including the US.
The fanfare surrounding the claimed breakthrough capabilities of AI can be seen as opportune in boosting company finances and funding for projects. (Shares in Microsoft leapt when it announced on February 7, 2023, that it would incorporate AI into its internet search results, having announced the previous month an extension of its partnership with development company OpenAI).
A joint essay for the book by Paul Whiteside of Crosslake Technologies, London; and Chin-Bun Tse and Amelia Yuen Shan Au-Yeung of the Claude Littner Business School of the University of West London, addresses the way robotic process automation (RPA) is revolutionising service industries. They say that robots will take people’s jobs, but most companies have introduced new efficiencies to an existing workforce rather than replacing it… and there is a long way to go before we have 100% automation and robots that can perform like a human.
In a joint presentation, ProfessorTaplin and Alojzy Nowak, rector of the University of Warsaw, submit that AI can be used to produce alternatives to meat and dairy that will make a major contribution to mitigating climate change by removing methane emissions, just as turning away from fossil fuels and embracing renewables will substantially reduce carbon emissions. This benefit may also solve deadly pandemics such as Covid 19 because inexpensive alternatives to meat and dairy, which can be imbued with the flavours of culturally accepted food, will mean that the risk of eating wildlife and bush meat will be unnecessary. They write that the latter is and has been the cause of local and historically recent pandemics that derive from so-called wet markets and meat found in the bush.
Kenneth Friedman, who teaches at Regis University, Colorado, heads his chapter Artificial Intelligence: A looming economic and moral crisis. He writes of the existential challenge: “If ‘anything humans can do, AI can do better’ what is the point in trying?” Wise government action, highly progressive tax codes coupled with generous and secure social safety nets may remove economic considerations from this question. All economically meaningful labour would be performed more efficiently by AI, and government policies would assure adequate means for a secure, comfortable life for all. That could lead worshippers at the Church of Mammon to reassess their priorities.
One thing is certain: AI is a deeply misunderstood technology, as Ruth Taplin sets out. It will move relentlessly forward in a new phase of the digital revolution that unites AI, intellectual property rights, cyber-risk, and robotics.
Artificial Intelligence, Intellectual Property, Cyber Risk and Robotics: A New Digital Age, edited By Ruth Taplin, is published by Routledge. https://www.routledge.com. ISBN 9780367857547.
