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[This piece has been published in Restoring America to highlight how a recent court decision regarding artificial intelligence and patent law could affect innovation in the technology sector.]

In the ongoing battle between robots and human inventors, score one for natural-born people: Last month, a federal appellate court held that artificial intelligence (AI) cannot, under American patent law, be regarded as an inventor.

The long-anticipated decision wasnt much of a surprise, though it came as a disappointment to Stephen Thaler, the polymathic inventor who argued that his own machine, DABUS, the Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience, deserved credit for inventing numerous technologies; Thaler maintains that he himself made no inventive contribution to DABUSs own independent innovations.

As discussed in this space on previous occasions, Thaler filed patent applications in Europe, Israel, South Africa, Taiwan, the UK, the U.S., Vietnam, and other locations, claiming inventions that spanned an emergency warning light to a food container graspable by robots. These attempts, however, have generally been met with resistance from patent offices across the globe, which have relied on patent statutes requiring an actual human to be named as inventor. (South Africa appears to be the only country thus far that has granted patents to DABUS; Israels decision is still pending.)

So, too, was DABUSs patent application initially rejected by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which concluded that the applicable U.S. patent legislation limits the definition of inventor to natural persons. Thaler challenged the ruling in federal district court in Virginia, which sided with the USPTO, and then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has exclusive jurisdiction over patent-related appeals.

And so in August, the Federal Circuit held that there is no ambiguity: the Patent Act requires that inventors must be natural persons; that is, human beings. Specifically, Judge Leonard Stark, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel of the court, ruled that the statute repeatedly refers to inventors as individuals, and that the U.S. Supreme Court and commonly used dictionaries define individuals as human beings.

The Federal Circuit also held that the patent statute requires an inventor to submit a declaration that such individual believes himself or herself to be the original inventor, and that while we do not decide whether an AI system can form beliefs, nothing in our record shows that one can, as reflected in the fact that Thaler submitted the requisite statements himself, purportedly on DABUS behalf.

Likewise, the court rejected Thalers argument that the patent statute elsewhere uses the broader term whoever, noting that those contexts relate not to who made an invention but to how it was made or to who may be infringing it. Just as corporations cannot be credited as inventors, the Federal Circuit concluded, so too is AI barred from inventorship.

So whats next? Thaler plans to petition for review from the Supreme Court, according to his attorney, Ryan Abbott, who told Bloomberg Law that the Federal Circuit decision ignores the purpose of the Patent Act and the outcome that AI-generated inventions are now unpatentable in the United States. That is an outcome with real negative social consequences.

Indeed, as Ive argued here and elsewhere, from a policy perspective, recognizing AI inventions would afford significant potential benefits to our patent system and would help spur innovation across a variety of sectors. But given the language of the patent statute and the current constellation of the judiciary, new legislation or at least USPTO guidelines may be required to make such recognition a reality. Either way, this isnt the last well be hearing from DABUS.

This article originally appeared in the AEIdeas blog and is reprinted with kind permission from the American Enterprise Institute.

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US Court of Appeals short-circuits artificial intelligence inventions - Washington Examiner

Marketing is one of the areas of business operations where it is widely predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) will drive enormous change. In fact, a McKinsey study found that, along with sales, it is the single business function where it will have the most financial impact. This means that if youre a marketer and youre not using AI, youre missing out on the benefits of what is possibly the most transformational technology.

Artificial Intelligence And The Future Of Marketing

Actually, though, the chances that there are people out there doing marketing today and not using AI in any shape or form is somewhat unlikely. This is simply because there are so many tools with AI features that we are used to using without even thinking about it. The most frequently used social and search engine advertising solutions, email marketing platforms, e-commerce solutions, and tools designed to assist with content creation all provide functionality that taps into what we refer to as AI in business today. To be clear, this isnt what we think of as general AI machines that have the capability to think and communicate like us and turn their hands to just about any task. In business today (and in marketing in particular), AI refers to software that helps us to carry out one particular job such as identifying where to place advertising in order to maximize efficiency or how to personalize an email to increase the likelihood of receiving a reply and get better and better as it is exposed to more data.

However, its my experience that, while there may be many tools out there and most marketers are increasingly comfortable with using them on a day-to-day basis, its often done in an ad-hoc manner. Many marketing departments still lack a coordinated, strategy-focused approach to implementing bigger projects. Just as importantly, many are lagging when it comes to fostering an AI-friendly, data-first culture as well as developing competencies and upskilling in order to meet the skills demand.

Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute and author of the new book Marketing Artificial Intelligence, told me that this is true in his experience too. In fact, when recently setting out to check up on his own hunch by searching for mentions of AI terminology in connection with 50 of the worlds top chief marketing officers, he found that only four of them had spoken publicly or been connected with their use of AI.

My question was, who is leading this? Who is doing this within marketing?

So, what we found was the industries that have a lot of data and a need for heavy personalization, and intelligent automation of their operations have been doing AI for probably the last decade - healthcare, financial services - but doing it within the operations of their business, not within marketing and sales.

But those same industries have a strong need for personalization, better customer experiences, better predictability of outcomes, the reasons youd use AI. But generally, at a macro level, we are extremely early in the understanding and adoption of AI ; that is my perception.

So what are the most exciting opportunities when it comes to using AI in marketing, and where are they already being tapped?

Advertising

Advertisers face the perennial problem of working out how best to place adverts in order to achieve the most bang for their buck.

Facebook and Google are the biggest online advertising platforms, and they both offer tools that work by combining audience segmentation with predictive analytics. Segmentation splits customers into groups according to characteristics gender, age, income level, interests, for example, and potentially an infinity of others. Predictive analytics works out which of these groups a particular product or service is most likely to appeal to. Facebook, Google, and all of the other platforms that offer advertising functions then allow businesses to target thousands of potential customers with multiple different versions of advertising materials in order to measure and assess their effectiveness. With traditional methods of advertising such as television, newspapers and magazines, its very difficult to attribute sales growth to advertising content, placement, or external factors. AI-driven advertising tools and platforms make this a doddle but are most effective when used as part of a coordinated AI marketing strategy, taking in the other areas of marketing covered here!

Public Relations

Public relations used to focus on the challenge of getting coverage of products and services into mainstream and specialist media publications. In today's online world, the media landscape has exploded, offering opportunities to promote brands directly through social media as well as via influencers and third-party content creators, sponsored and unsponsored. But how do you know where to find the best influencers to bond and cultivate relationships with?

Here once again, AI can help by matching products with people who have cultivated audiences that are likely to be synched to a brands appeal and values. Some uses of AI in this field of marketing involve taking things a step further though, such as AI-generated influencer Lil Miquela who has used chatbot technology to create an entirely digital persona. Despite the fact she doesnt exist, millions of followers consider her an arbiter of style and are happy to go along with her recommendations, meaning she can earn a hefty fee from brands like Calvin Klein and Prada.

Writing press releases, shaping external messaging points, and researching the best outlets (online or digital) for gaining coverage are other PR tasks that can all be augmented by AI.

Content Marketing

Content is king has been accepted wisdom in marketing departments since the dawn of web2.0 and the rise of user-generated content platforms (including social media). But what content is king? And where should we put it? How often, how in-depth or simplified quite simply, how do we make sure our content achieves our aims of establishing our brand, positioning ourselves as experts or authorities in our field, and, of course, eventually generating sales and leads?

Well, one option is to use AI. Buzzfeed is one of the biggest content-driven sites in the world, and Roetzer has examined how it uses AI to drive every aspect of its operations, such as determining the odds of a particular piece of content going viral, suggesting what content visitors would like to see, and automating the routine aspects of publication such as keyword selection, categorization, and personalization. What marks out Buzzfeed as a truly AI-driven content outlet is its strategy-focused approach where every piece of content as well as every user interaction is measured and optimized for insights that can then be put to work anywhere within marketing operations.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is often about tweaking headings, scheduling, and copy in order to impact those all-important open and click-through rates. Small differences in the language that is used can make the difference between an email getting identified as one of the 148 billion spam emails sent each day and snared by a filter or making its way through to the intended recipient at a time when they are open to suggestions on what they should buy.

A large number of AI-powered tools exist to help with these tasks, such as Phrasee, which automates the creation of subject lines; Seventh Sense which optimizes the timing of mailshots; and rasa.io, which makes it easy to create personalized newsletters.

Where next?

Whether AI achieves the potential that clearly exists depends on businesses coming to understand the need for a coordinated and strategic approach to marketing AI implementation. It should be clear enough how the different use cases I have mentioned above can be useful in isolation. But the real value is unlocked when we start using them together, with the aim of answering our most pressing questions, influencing our most important metrics, and achieving key business goals.

Roetzer tells me Its this tricky spot because a lot of business professionals still see AI as some kind of abstract, sci-fi thing I dont think they understand that its extremely approachable, you can test AI today find a tool for $19 per month and try it its not something where you have to spend six months preparing a pilot project.

However, what you do need is people and more specifically, people with the relevant skills. Most marketing departments outside of large enterprise companies wont be appointing dedicated, specialist data scientists and neither should they need to.

As a company goes through the ongoing process of developing a data-and-AI-literate culture, it is more important that it enables people who are already experts in their particular field to upskill and understand the importance of the technology.

When it comes to those who get it totally right "honestly, it's hard to find," Roetzer says.

"Either brands are doing it, and they don't want to talk about it because they think it's a competitive advantage or, they're not actually doing anything maybe just starting to run pilot projects or find someone on their team who can lead this its very hard to find the intersection of business professionals who understand what AI is capable of doing, and can apply it to real business problems and use cases.

You can click here to check out my webinar with Paul Roetzer, CEO and founder of Marketing AI Institute, where we cover many other aspects of AI in marketing, including the questions of machine creativity and AI ethics, as well as take a look at his most recent book, Marketing Artificial Intelligence.

To stay on top of the latest on the latest business and tech trends, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter and follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

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Artificial Intelligence And The Future Of Marketing - Forbes

Technologies that enable data storage and data-based decisions will attract investment focus from Asia/Pacific* healthcare providers.

SINGAPORE, September 12, 2022 Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cloud are the top technologies that healthcare providers in Asia/Pacific (including Japan) will be investing on in the next three years, according to the recently published IDC report titled IDC Public Sector Asia/Pacific (Including Japan) Survey, 2022 Healthcare Sector Analysis.

The survey report focuses on healthcare providers, such as hospitals, clinics, and primary healthcare centers, and covers 99 respondents for healthcare providers out of a total of 421 respondents. It captures key insights from IT managers and above from the healthcare provider sector. Analysis reveals the trend of emerging technologies, hybrid working strategies, outsourcing priorities, and priority care areas as part of integrated care in Asia/Pacific.

Highlights of the report include:

"The priorities of care providers in Asia/Pacific are undergoing a clear change, driven by their patient-centric care needs and increased focus on clinical data. While there will be an investment focus on cloud and AI by the care providers to have better efficiency and agility in handling data, there must also be a focus on structured data generation and 'explainability' for AI-based solutions. This approach will ensure acceptability, adaptability, and scalability of solutions in predictive and personalized care management, moving forward," says Manoj Vallikkat, Senior Research Manager, IDC Asia/Pacific Healthcare Insights.

For more information on this IDC document, please contact Manoj Vallikkat atmvallikkat@idc.com. For media inquiries, please contact Miguel Carreon at mcarreon@idc.com or Michael de la Cruz at mdelacruz@idc.com.

*Asia/Pacific including Japan

-Ends-

IDC Health Insights

IDC Health Insights assists health businesses and IT leaders, in making more effective technology decision by providing insightful fact-based research and consulting services. Our global research analyzes and advises on business and technology issues facing the payer, provider and life sciences industries. For more information, please visit http://www.idc.com/insights/health or email info@idc-hi.com .

About IDC

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,300 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading tech media, data and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit http://www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter at @IDCAP and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cloud are Top Investment Priorities by Healthcare Providers in Asia/Pacific* - IDC

ROBOTS could one day overthrow humans in an 'apocalyptic' takeover, a tech expert has predicted.

Aidan Meller, the creator of the Ai-Da robot, believes that within three years artificial intelligence (AI) could overtake humanity, per The Daily Star.

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He also backsElon Musk's belief thatadvances in AI could impact mankind more than nuclear war.

"I agree with Elon Musk that AI is a bigger threat than nuclear war but it could also be remarkable too," he said

"There is every right to feel nervous about the rise of AI," he added.

"We are hurtling towards them taking over humans so we need to have a heart of ethics."

Meller explained there is cause for concern as this is a changing world in which humans are merging with machines.

Aidan said: "AI is going to show a mirror to the dark side of being human."

"Technology is not good or bad, its how we use it. This exhibition will show how it came about and where we want to go."

Just a few days ago, Meller was presenting his Ai-Da robot, the world's first ultra-realistic artistbot, at the Imagining AI exhibit in Oxford, UK.

The bot draws and paints using cameras in its eyes, its AI algorithms, androboticarms.

It's called Ai-Da after Ada Lovelace, the famed 18th-century English mathematician.

Though it isn't human, Ai-Da's work has been praised for its detail and one reporter forArt Revieweven called it "kind of hot".

The humanoid robot creates its paintings using AI algorithms and cameras in its eyes that monitor its masterpieces.

"We are making leaps robots will become human and AI is already manipulating social media and elections," Meller said.

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We have major Ai-Da international news coming in October and November profound innovations to make her more human-like," he added. "Shes not conscious but she is a machine you can interact with."

"This project is to raise questions and challenge ethics. The tipping point will be 2025 and by the end of next year were all going to be in the Metaverse."

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AI creator warns of apocalyptic artificial intelligence that will replace need for humans... - The US Sun

Deepfakes are scarily simple to create. But will this technology create a reality of alternative facts where truth goes to die? No. Deepfakes are a technology, and more widespread abuse is expected with more widespread availability. Over time, we will adopt better transparency, better detection, and, most importantly, each of us users will become more aware and thus better equipped to fight the abuse of Deepfakes.

Deep Fakes are here to stay.

What are deepfakes?

Deepfakes are a way to manipulate images. Image manipulation is not new. Stalin removed Nikolai Yezhov from still images. Today, the underlying technology that creates deepfakes is Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI-supported deepfake technology offers improved capabilities - but it also increases the scale for manipulation and bad actor intervention. Starting with obvious examples: Check out this Tiktok compilation about Tom Cruise. FAKE. Or this video of Barack Obama calling Trump a total and complete dipshit. Also, FAKE. The list goes on. There was once a meme in which Nicolas Cage became the fake leading actor of a series of different movies (video compilation). Today, anyone can create a deepfake. No programming skills are needed. If youre interested in learning more about the technology behind deepfakes in detail, take a look at this Forbes article.

Deepfakes are widely used today - and theyre here to stay. Its AI and thus the same technology that helps read human emotions (for example, for people with Autism) or helps identify obstacles on the road (for example, a Duck Chase). Deepfakes are also used in Hollywood: Look no further than to the Star Wars empire, the de-aging in Marvel movies, or the Late Paul Walker in Fast & Furious 7. Deepfakes have the potential to replace high-end CGI, which would save millions of dollars and countless hours of processing time in filmmaking.

But then deepfakes can be - and are - abused. Unfortunately, this type of abuse of technology is nothing new. In my 2014 book Ask Measure Learn I wrote: [...] when email suddenly made it possible to communicate with large numbers of strangers for free, it immediately led to the problem of unsolicited commercial email, better known as spam. When computers could communicate openly through networks, it spawned viruses and Trojan horses. And now that we live in a society of social media channels and information on demand, this world has become flooded with phoney or even fraudulent information. Spam has grown into social spam. [...]

During the 2013 Strata Conference (video), I presented state-of-the-art, AI-driven Bot conversations and the ways to detect them. Our technology has evolved over the last decade, and in addition to fake emails, fake Amazon reviews, and fake bot conversations, we are now dealing with deepfakes. This is pretty annoying. But, on the bright side, the way to deal with this threat remains the same: detection, transparency, regulation, and education.

(1) Detection

A growing number of researchers are studying fake news or building technologies to identify deepfakes. Big Tech firms like Google, Microsoft, and Meta have openly condemned deepfake technology and are creating tools for recognizing them. Microsoft is creating new anti-deep-fake technology to fight misinformation (Microsoft Video Authenticator). YouTube, owned by Google, reiterated in February 2020 that it will not host deepfake videos related to the U.S. election, voting procedures, or the 2020 U.S. census.

With over Millions of dollars of awards, Meta's deepfake detector challenge has encouraged researchers and developers to create algorithms to fight deepfakes. The challenges launch came after releasing a large dataset of visual deepfakes produced in collaboration with Jigsaw, Googles internal technology incubator. In addition, the large dataset of deepfakes was incorporated into a benchmark made freely available to researchers for developing synthetic video detection systems.

In a rapidly evolving and attention-frenzy world, detecting deepfakes is even more important. However, we are nowhere close to distinguishing real content from fake. Some of the best tools out there are Counter.social, deeptrace, Reality Defender, and Sensity.ai (which claims to be the worlds first deepfake detection tool). Still, the best deepfake detector is still only 65% accurate. Even Azure Cognitive Services was fooled over 78% of the time.

The future of these detectors will likely mirror bot detectors, spam detectors, or any other cyber threat detectors. Each evolution will spark a counter-reaction. It will be an arms race, or put differently: future deepfake detection will be as good as your Email Spam Detector and we all know that we still get the SPAM from Nigerian princes in our inboxes.

(2) Transparency

Social networks have allowed us to connect with everyone. This new connectedness means every fringe opinion will find its audience. Lies and fake news have become a business model. Chaos and mistrust were the consequence. To instill trust, social media companies created verified accounts (for example in Twitter). In a world of deepfake abundance, verified accounts alone will not be not sufficient. For instance, even the verified RealDonaldTrump account tweeted a DeepFake of Pelosi, which was widely shared and re-shared. In order to eliminate second-order effects of social networks, a different level of transparency is required.

Perhaps, we can establish trust if we know the source of a given video? One proposition to combat deepfakes points to the usage of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) as a possible solution: If everyone encrypted their videos as NFTs, it would be easy to find and compare different sources of the same moment.

(3) Regulation

Misuse of deepfakes without a clear identification should be outlawed - and regulators around the globe have started to take them seriously. Already in 2019, there were about a dozen federal- and state-level bills to regulate deepfakes. These laws range from criminalizing the use of a womans likeness in a pornographic film without her consent (Virginia Law), to the appropriate use of a deceased persons data (New York Law), and dealing with cheap fakes (low-tech digital frauds not requiring AI). When we look at how personal data is being used, and realize the value of a digital identity, it becomes clear that privacy is a key pillar of a digitally safe environment. To read more on this, see my take on privacy and data.

Spam and Fake news is nothing new.

(4) Education

Coming back to the Nigerian Prince. These scams typically start with an email. The fraudsters offer a share of a vast investment opportunity but, in turn, need some money from you. There are many different versions of this internet scam, and it keeps coming back. But, today, many wont fall for it anymore. Why? Because you have all heard about it (if not, you just did here). Education is the best protection. And just like with the Nigerian Prince, we need the same degree of education for deepfakes.

With that purpose in mind, Channel 4 in the UK created a deepfake of the Queens speech last Christmas. It was hilarious and brought deepfakes into the public discussion. For my course at Cornell, where I teach MBA candidates to design products that use Data and AI, we start each term with a 1min Video summary that Prithvi and I created to welcome the students to the course. Yes, its fun. But its also a reminder to all of us that great technology can be abused.

This article was written with Prithvi Sriram, who has not only been a student of the course, but also helped create toolkits that future students can use to get their hands on Deep Learning. He currently works at Infinitus Systems, a late series B healthcare startup, where he was the founding member of the analytics team.

Please see this Forbes article if you are looking for an overview of different Deep Learning tool sets for deepfakes.

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Deepfakes - The Danger Of Artificial Intelligence That We Will Learn To Manage Better - Forbes