Evolving AI Raises Human Creativity Concern

The exponential rise of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) since the 1900s has completely changed the socio-economic context in which the Patent Act of 1790, and its successive amended versions were enacted. Since then the person of ordinary skill in the arts (PHOSITA) and in relation to this hypothetical person, the meaning of utility, novelty, non-obviousness, of an invention requiring human ingenuity and the manner in which the invention is to be disclosed to the public in exchange for a limited period monopoly over the invention by the inventor has undergone a sea change. In the last few decades, the world has seen a dramatic change in socio-economic-political structures, remarkable advances in STEM, e.g., in information and computing technologies, quantum computing, genetic engineering and synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, etc. These have had an enormous impact on the environment in which the Homo sapiens find themselves in. Such drastic changes are harbingers of natural speciation, an event that may not be too far off with unknown consequences. The species that succeed the Homo sapiens will likely be so far superior in intellect, intuition, and serendipity as to drive the Homo sapiens to extinction. This book assumes such an unfolding scenario and therefore suggests interim changes to the patent system so that the present debilitating stresses it faces, especially in the form of litigation, are substantially reduced. Our successor species will then perhaps remember us based not solely on our fossil record but also on our ability to anticipate the future and prepare for it intelligently.