I, Patent

I've been considering Asimov's "I, Robot" book in light of the movie. And I've been considering it in the context of what I have read and absorbed over the last few years. It seems incidental that I've been writing a lot recently about patents - after rewinding through the movie a bit in my head, I realized a few things. First, the robotics company did have a certain feel to it - the overwhelming amount of control within a society, the comment about the "richest man in the world", and so on. There's a parallel that can be drawn which could be called 'xyz-bashing', with 'xyz' replaced with a certain corporate name. But that's not where I'm going with this, though the parallel is a bit unsettling. Of course, Viki's speech at the end does sound a lot like George W. Bush's Patriot Act.

It's partly because of Isaac Asimov's work that I discovered the field of computer programming; I've always been interested in creating "artificial intelligence", though my definition of what that phrase means has evolved as I became more widely read and more aware of the world around me.

Evolved. Follow the bread crumbs.

Part of my reading every month includes Scientific American whenever I get a hold of it, and I recall reading - perhaps last year - about algorithms being used for evolution of circuits. I could dig through my sadly disorganized room and find the offending article, and I may yet still - but I do not want to lose my train of thought. Suffice to say that even NASA has been exploring the way software, through algorithms which evolve solutions, can assist in certain ways. Towards Evolving Electronic Circuits for Autonomous Space Applications is an interesting paper by NASA's folks, and there are many other search results related to this area.

Evolving digital circuits? What a wonderful thing - no longer do we have to wait for engineers to design something better, we can have systems design circuits through evolution. While some only know evolution as 'survival of the fittest' (a phrase which the late Thomas Darwin supposedly disliked), there's another way to look at it: Trial And Error. Basically, letting loose a system to evolve designs of digital circuits allows interesting changes within the circuit. This was well detailed within the Scientific American article I speak of - I'll try to find it tommorow/today and toss it in the comments.

So we have digital circuits being evolved by software. And what else? Certainly this is a great benefit for coming to timely solutions, though it certainly raises the bar in the already competitive arena of 'making better solutions'. Instead of depending as much on human talent and ability, we can use brute force to pick some of the best and brightest solutions. I cannot help but feel a small wave of sadness, though I also understand that unless the system can rewrite it's own code *and* the manner in which it writes it's own code, there's still hope for human creativity in such endeavours.

But let's look at this through Intellectual Property Law a bit - as an amateur, I'll try to negotiate this mine field, and hope that people with more knowledge in the legal profession will correct me if and where I am wrong.

Now we have Copyrighted Software - which may also be patented - evolving solutions such as digital circuits, which can then be patented. But who patents the final circuit? Is it the person who ran the software, the person who wrote the software, the company that paid the person to write the software, or simply the holder of the original patent? In the case of all of them being the same, the answer is obvious. There's nothing stopping me from writing some code that can use brute force to create patents. If I'm smart, I can even have it submit every single permutation to the patent office automatically. That's a lot of patent applications - and if the United States Patent Office thinks it's swarmed now, then they have a serious problem in the near future.

Now let's take this back to human creativity. While we can say that brute force algorithms that evolve such circuits are for the betterment of mankind, we also have to realize that if software like this gains dominance, we're pretty much out of jobs - at least those of us who think up solutions to problems. I think - and hope - that there will always be room for mankind in creative solutions, but we have to also be realistic. Why do we need to be creative when we can just have computers handle solutions through such algorithms?

Back to the laws. Basically, whoever has the most processing power on their hands wins in the patent game of the future. We can get a whole bunch of monkeys typing everything out, and copyright that too. Every possible permutation. All copyrighted. Here in Trinidad and Tobago, I can fill a database with every possible permutation and the databse falls under my copyright - automatically. No notice, nothing. It's mine.

But I've saved the best for last. Put all of this together and think about Copyrighted and Patented Software evolving - guess what - Copyrighted and Patented Software which then evolves - Copyrighted and Patented Software...

End Simulation.

The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.