AI began to invent new technologies without the help of humans

ARTIFICIAL intelligence has the ability to invent on its own, according to a new study.

A new paper published Dec. 7 in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence questions whether or not AI can invent on its own.

The research examines the claims of Stephen Thaler, co-founder of Scentient.ai, who filed patent applications for two inventions that identify AI as the sole inventor.

And while the study’s authors find “technical” reasons why the computer isn’t the sole inventor in some cases, they also cite times when AI invented itself.

The authors, Toby Walsh and Alexandra George talk about it in an article for Scroll.In.

One of the first such examples includes a radio antenna developed by genetic programming.

The study authors point to the second example: “the Oral-B CrossAction toothbrush.”

They note that this was invented by Thaler during a brainstorming session with a neural network.

And in more recent cases, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used a deep neural network to identify a new antibiotic compound called Halicin.

In fact, MIT researchers named Halicin after HAL, the AI ​​computer in Arthur C Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Walsh and George revealed.

And these are just a few examples of what companies are doing with AI these days.

How is AI invented?

Walsh and George call the idea behind how AI programs invent relatively simple.

“You define a space of concepts, and the program explores that space,” they write.

“Space is usually very large, even infinite. Therefore, considerable effort must be invested in determining whether a part of space is worth exploring further, as well as in confirming any promise of a new concept. “

The experience

To put this idea into play, they asked the Jurassic-1 chatbot to create a patent similar to one of Thaler’s apps.

Their findings were as follows: “PVC, latex or silicone rubber gloves, particularly disposable gloves. The invention provides a glove having a flexible grip portion formed from a fractal pattern.”

“The grip part is formed from a continuous fractal pattern. The flexible grip part is strong and rigid enough to perform its intended function,” the AI-generated result continued.

What came next was to see if the idea was original by checking the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s online database.

After browsing the site, they found no patents containing the words “glove” and “fractal”.

“It is therefore possible that a glove with a flexible fractal grip pattern could be patented,” the authors noted.

“It is important to note that this idea was generated independently by the computer, without human assistance or prompting,” they added.