

Patent: Artificial Intelligence System - lumberjack
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=%22Artificial+Intelligence+System%22.TI.&OS=TTL/%22Artificial+Intelligence+System%22&RS=TTL/%22Artificial+Intelligence+System%22

======
TheMagicHorsey
Software patents are utter garbage. We all know that. Most software patent
attorneys know that. The system has evolved to keep lawyers employed. It is a
way of taxing engineers to support lawyers. The plaintiffs need lawyers. The
defendants need lawyers. There must be judges. The entire system gets weighted
down with this huge load of unproductive individuals. Think of how many
engineers become patent attorneys because law is so lucrative. Entry level
patent attorneys in firms make $160K a year. Think of how little an engineer
makes even four or five years out of college. Its more lucrative to patent and
sue, than to build. These are the little things that are going to erode
America's competitiveness.

~~~
josephagoss
I agree, I even know a friend who was studying computer science but moved over
to law, his reasoning was how manipulating the law gives you a advantage over
other people. The same is in Australia, our society values lawyers and they
ruin almost everything.

Make no mistake, many lawyers would see the world burn just to make a bigger
buck. Many of them truly don't care.

~~~
d5tryr
That's a courageous and bold statement to make. Apart from the weasel words
that entirely undermine it.

If you want to say that all lawyers are evil, without any evidence, at least
have the conviction to say that.

If you want to imply that some undefined minority, or possible majority, of
lawyers may, or may not, potentially be paid arsonists, but might also not be
arsonists, paid or otherwise, then... I dunno, maybe say something worthwhile
instead.

~~~
lukifer
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

One shouldn't draw the conclusion that lawyers are evil. Instead, it's a
generalized principle: humans find ways to rationalize their participation in
any system which awards them wealth and status, whether it's a little or a
lot. Some patent attorneys know that patents are bullshit and profit from them
anyway (whether on behalf of the trolls or the little guy), many internalize
the belief that they are defending genuinely deserved intellectual property
rights. There is a tendency for people to look at whether a system does well
by themselves and their loved ones, and then work backwards to decide what is
just.

(See also: the Banality of Evil.)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banality_of_evil>

------
kevinpet
The "inventor" appears to be head of a small defense sub-contractor.
<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/cognitivecode>

Note that the patent has not been issued. I certainly hope that this gibberish
isn't taken to be sufficient details for someone to implement.

~~~
lumberjack
>Note that the patent has not been issued.

Thanks for pointing that out. I read the whole thing (surprisingly an easy
read as far as patents go) and somehow missed the most important part.

Does this mean that it is still in process or was it a failed application?

~~~
yoda_sl
Probably not yet reviewed

------
axman6

        "Software patents are utter garbage"
    
        " I certainly hope that this gibberish isn't taken to be sufficient details for someone to implement."
    
        "isn't this patent a little bit too reaching and isn't the logic a little bit too obvious to be worthy of patent?"
    

It's very clear from basically every single comment on this story that most of
you have no clue about the patent system nor what to actually look for when
sizing up a patent. I've picked just a few comments that demonstrate the
general ignorance that can be seen here (this is not an insult, but people
need to understand when they do not understand something and aren't qualified
to comment).

I'd love for someone to reply with a citation that shows that just claim 1 is
not novel, or is not inventive. To meet this criteria, the citation must
either disclose ALL THE FEATURES LISTED IN THE CLAIM or it must be OBVIOUS to
produce SOMETHING EXACTLY AS CLAIMED based on one or more PRIOR ART documents.
It is not sufficient that all the features be in a single citation, but it
must be obvious to actually come to the same invention AS CLAIMED.

So if someone could please find for me one or more citations which combined
(and under Australian law it must be obvious to do so) which contains:

A method for a computer system to interpret an input from a user and generate
a response, comprising:

1) receiving a user input;

2) converting the user input into an input array comprising rows and columns
having a plurality of concepts;

3) determining if any of the plurality of concepts in the input array is
derived from a root concept;

4) if any of the plurality of concepts is derived from a root concept,
replacing each such derived concept with the corresponding root concept,
identifying one or more related concepts that relate to the root concept, and
generating a multi-dimensional array based on the input array that includes
the one or more related concepts;

5) generating one or more additional multi-dimensional arrays, based on the
input, containing any composite concepts, each derived from two or more
concepts contained in the original array;

6) marking one or more concepts in the multi-dimensional arrays as essential
based on application-specific criteria;

7) correlating a plurality of concepts in the multi-dimensional array to a
plurality of first elements in a database by comparing a plurality of linear
arrays derived from the multidimensional array to the plurality of elements in
the database, wherein the first elements in the database includes a link to a
second element in the database do not comprise possible responses;

8) determining a plurality of possible responses to the user input based on
the correlation of the multi-dimensional array and the plurality of elements
in the database

9) and generating a response to the user input.

There's 9 broad concepts here, and to my knowledge, at least 3, 4, 5 and 7
seem non-obvious to me, but my AI background is weak. Even if they are known,
is it known to combine ALL those features in the way claimed? I'd be surprised
if it were, the USPTO is actually quite good at searching in general.

It's so depressing to see a forum of people who are supposed to be intelligent
and rational jumping to their guns at the mere mention of the word patent. Of
course there are some junk patents, but those few should not be used to
devalue the work done by inventors big, small or individuals around the world.
If you don't even know how to read a patent, why do you feel like you're
qualified to comment on their validity? We don't discredit academic papers
because we've seen some of the words in their titles before, so why should
patents be any different? It's dishartening to see such ignorance almost
encouraged on Hacker News.

~~~
crististm
The burden of proof is on you. I'd like for you to demonstrate that claim 1 is
indeed novel and so forth and not been presented in every sci-fie movie on
Earth. And while you're at it, please provide some git repo for us mortals to
enlighten us on what we've been all missing since the rise of AI.

If concept 3 is non-obvious to you then you have no right on claiming
ignorance on patent law from our part.

~~~
axman6
The burden of proof is surely not on me (and what you ask is actually
impossible); I'm refuting those who say that the invention __defined by the
claims __is clearly obvious. This is something which is not impossible, all
that is needed is a citation or two which discloses all the features of the
invention. If they have proof, then they can show it, and show the USPTO while
they're at it. It is not possible to prove that something __is __novel or
inventive, you can only show to a high degree of certainty. It is however
comparatively trivial to show that it is not novel or inventive.

Also, the idea that AI covers human level intelligence goes against the whole
field of AI over the last, what, 5, 6 decades? Computers that can play chess
are considered to use AI, but they certainly can't take over the world.

~~~
crististm
The problem is at it's root. Obviously it is not an invention or we would have
heard of Skynet at news. Since this is clearly not the case, any claim from
the patent owner is simply an arrogance. If the patent has been issued this
just proves ignorance on USPTO part.

The ultimate point is that if all you have to do to receive a patent is just
an idea, then the patent system is broken. The patent should protect the
implementation, not the idea.

~~~
axman6
Do you even know what the study of AI is about? I even laid it out for you and
yet you still bring up nonsense like references to Skynet? Just because they
use a term artificial intelligence does not mean they're talking about the
Hollywood definition of what AI means, it means they're talking about a system
which behaves in a way we would consider more intelligent than what we're used
to currently (and most successful AI projects just become regarded as the
normal way things are done). Google's search suggestions and related searches
would be regarded as examples of AI. See
[http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~isb9112/dept/phil341/wisai/Wha...](http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~isb9112/dept/phil341/wisai/WhatisAI.html)
for a good explanation.

You seem to be getting stuck on the title of the patent application, and this
has absolutely no effect whatsoever on the scope of the claimed invention and
is, as far as patent validity is concerned completely irrelevant and must only
be generally related to the disclosure.

"The patent should protect the implementation, not the idea"... That is
exactly what this application seeks to do! It's seeking to protect their
implementation of performing a search or giving suggestions (or something
similar, on an iPhone and don't want to have to read it again on here). But
you can't do that by providing source code, it would make the patent worthless
because someone sticking some extra irrelevant step in the middle could claim
it doesn't do the same thing. If you invented a new toaster that used one
tenth the energy and took a tenth as long, would you want to be able to stop
people using the same mechanism that allowed you to do that? Or would you want
to be able to only stop people from making a toaster that is exactly the same
as the one you've created, and if someone adds a cooling rack on top, you
couldn't stop them from taking your idea which you've invested time and effort
in. This is exactly the same for software patents. You patent inventive
solutions to problems, in a way that means you can protect it in all it's
forms, just just the one way you've written it in the one language you've
chosen to do so.

Of course people should be able to apply for patents for mere ideas before
actual creation; this is how you make money from being an inventor for
anything more than simple back shed ideas: you come up with a novel and
inventive way to do something, you talk to a patent attorney and apply for a
patent, and then you go to investors and say "hey, I have this awesome idea
that can make you money. Give me money to implement it, and my patent will
insure that only you are allowed to use that idea or to licence it to those of
your choosing". The patent system is all about protecting ideas, but people
chuck a spaz when it's not something as tangible as a new gearbox or a new
chemical or a new piece of mining equipment or whatever it is. It is my firm
belief that people who come up with novel and inventive ideas through hard
work and often a lot of their own money should be able to protect others from
stealing their ideas. Without this, there is almost no incentive for people to
form start ups with great new ideas they've had; large companies are free to
just take their ideas and there's nothing that can be done about it.

~~~
crististm
The toaster example is relevant. It is a physical thing, like a particular git
repo would be, too. In contrast, an idea is not relevant. It just happens that
in US, ideas are patentable - which is nonsense. A nonsense that you happen to
agree with. Yet you contradict yourself - on one paragraph you want to protect
the implementation, and in another you wish you could protect the idea.

I'm not stuck on the title, and I know just as little about AI as only there
are strong and weak forms of it. But if I happen to look at Star Trek tonight
I should not be allowed to go and patent 30+ "ideas" that I saw in that movie
or that I dreamt of.

------
loup-vaillant
Muhaha, patent all you like, it won't protect you from the intelligence
explosion (you know, that AI that turns itself into Skynet before the Patent
Office can strike it down).

On a more serious note, I'm glad I'm living in a country where there's no such
thing as infringing software patents.

------
jacques_chester
I worked out one reason why software patents are so terribly troublesome
versus patents for physical mechanisms.

Because we deal in abstractions.

You can always take this piece of code you wrote and notice that it can be
abstracted to solve a class of problems. And then that this class of problems
is in turn a subclass of a larger set of problems. And then it's increasingly
vague all the way down.

Before long your patent application transforms from "Method to improve page
retrieval on ARM7 CPUs" to "Method to improve caching in memory" to "Method to
improve caching" to "Method to accelerate any computation".

That generally doesn't happen in the physical world, because physical
inventions aren't easily generalisable. You can't take a tractor and, with a
few lines of code, abstract it into a platonic ideal that can also spit out
cars, buses, trains, planes, ships and the starship Enterprise.

------
yoda_sl
It is not yet a patent: it has been filed but there is no patent number and no
patent issue dates. You can find tons of such patent pending for reviews.

~~~
gweinberg
Its patent number is 8,126,832 and its issue date is Feb 28 2012.

Related application 60893237 has no patent number or issue date, is that what
you are looking at?

------
lumberjack
I feel really insecure posting this but I have to ask: isn't this patent a
little bit too reaching and isn't the logic a little bit too obvious to be
worthy of patent? Or are my feelings of insecurity justified and I am truly
too ignorant to recognize the intricacies and complexities laid down in that
sea of text?

~~~
shmerl
It's not news that there are tons of broad patents of ridiculous nature which
obviously have prior art.

~~~
axman6
But this isn't a broad patent, it's in fact very specific in its claims, and
no one here has managed to provide anything that resembles prior art for this
patent. You should stop making ridiculous claims without any proof or facts to
back them up.

~~~
shmerl
You are being ridiculous. I worked with a similar system during my CS studies.
I.e. artificial intelligence analysis of natural language input. Patenting
such old known ideas is pure lunacy. Anyway, I view patenting such ideas as
ridiculous even if they weren't known before. Such abstractions simply should
be unpatentable.

~~~
axman6
Got a citation that has all the features of even the first claim? That's all
that's needed. The patent doesn't claim a system which does analysis of
natural language input, it claims a specific system for doing such. Again,
find a citation and prove it isn't novel or inventive. Until then, why should
anyone consider it invalid? The law must work on proof, not people saying "Oh
yeah, I've totally done that before, trust me". If it's so obvious, then it
should be easy to find a citation.

Also, why should inventive ideas in software be any less valuable and worthy
of protection as inventive ideas for physical objects? This patent protects a
very narrow scope, anything that infringed it would have to perform _all_ the
steps in the first claim and it seems to me that it wouldn't be too hard to
design a similar system which doesn't infringe. It might not be dissimilar
enough to get you a patent, but it also wouldn't infringe.

~~~
shmerl
_Also, why should inventive ideas in software be any less valuable and worthy
of protection as inventive ideas for physical objects?_

Why don't you go further with your logic. Why inventive math theories can't be
patentable? Or may be abstract information theory itself? You can make it
absurd by pushing the border in that direction. I draw the line at the point
which excludes software and algorithms from patentability.

Besides the theoretical aspect of what should be patentable, there is a very
pragmatic one, which was already brought many times, and all software patent
proponents pretend that it doesn't exist - patent thickets. In case of
hardware they aren't a major risk, but in case of software they are completely
unavoidable and tend to be horrifically tense. It's a good enough of a reason
to render software unpatentable, since in the case of software the patents
don't serve their purpose, instead of promoting innovation, they stifle it.
Whether you like it or not, that's how it works. Europe had enough common
sense to forbid software patentability, but US didn't.

~~~
axman6
The line is drawn where the invention stops being a part of the _useful arts_
, and an algorithm on its own is not useful, but a system using a new
algorithm is indeed useful, and that's where the distinction between
algorithms and software lies.

Patent thickets are indeed an issue, but they've been an issue several times
in the past and the world didn't stop turning. See
[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/69a96688-b776-11e2-841e-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/69a96688-b776-11e2-841e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2VEIG5cV8)
for a brief discussion. I completely agree the patent system is not perfect,
but I do believe it's important to allow the small guy to come up with new
inventions, be it software or not, and be able to protect themselves from
having the big guy steal their ideas with nothing in return.

The patent system is a man made system, and all man made systems will be
exploited by man if it is in their best interest, and that's exactly what big
corporations are doing. But without the system, the little guy stands
absolutely no chance against the big guy and with it they do. This is how
innovation is encouraged by the patent system. You bet your arse that when a
small company funded by those here gets their ideas stolen that people here
will be up in arms. But if they have parents, they have a real method of
recourse, whereas without, all they can do is call them out on it, but have no
guarantee that they'll get anything at all. Without the patent system, we'd
get rid of patent trolls, but we'd being in the much worse "Idea theifs", who
steal the work done with other's time and investment to produce products for
their own profit.

------
walid
The sentence:

The method of claim 1 wherein the user is a computer.

describes polymorphism in OOP.

Way to go!

------
coopdog
So how can we / could we have stopped this patent. Is there an easy online way
to submit prior art for patents under consideration? That way all the reviewer
has to do is accept the prior art and nuke the application

~~~
axman6
Do you have any prior art? This is not a patent for "Artificial intelligence"
in general, it's a patent for a very specific method of doing something that
appears intelligent, and this is actually what artificial intelligence is all
about. See my comment above to see what is required for something to be
relevant prior art. Basically, you're not going to find it. And who cares
anyway, the scope of the claims is really quite narrow, it's going to take a
lot of effort for someone to actually come up with a system which infringes
this patent without having read the thing in the first place.

~~~
VikingCoder
> my AI background is weak

> it's going to take a lot of effort for someone

First, you assert that you are not an expert in AI. Then you assert how much
effort would be required to independently come up with the same
implementation.

You have to chose which of those two assertions to make.

~~~
axman6
My AI background is weak but not non-existant. But this is beside the point.
I'm not the one making claims this is a junk patent and that it's clearly
obvious. The ones who are have provided no proof that it is obvious. For a
patent to be invalid, there must be proof, you can't just say "oh clearly it's
obvious" because you can say that about anything at all once you know the
solution to the problem.

Regarding my comment on how much effort it would take, I was stating my
opinion that it, at face value, doesn't seem obvious to me. But the assertion
that it is obvious and a terrible patent is something that can be proven with
a single link, but no one has provided one. And I believe the reason for this
is because the naysayers have no idea what they're talking about and are too
ignorant to know that just because the term artificial intelligence is used
does not mean that they are claim all artificial intelligence systems
conceivable to man, but merely the system they have invented.

By all means, prove me wrong, find a citation that shows this is either not
new or is obvious, but until you do, the patent stands as a valid patent. Any
citation you find I'd be more than happy to look through and see whether it is
a suitable citation, but until then, the naysayers haven't a leg to stand on.

~~~
VikingCoder
I'll make an array of the parts of your post that I disagree with. And
optionally an array of the parts of your post that I agree with. I'll mark any
root concepts, and then highlight where they appear in the rest of your
comment. Then I'll make an array of possible responses, and check for frequent
use of the root concepts.

Wrapping something in patent-mumbo-jumbo, doesn't prevent it from being
bullshit. No one will find a link to prove that making arrays and root
concepts and blah blah blah has prior art, because it's all crap. Top to
bottom.

That's my opinion.

~~~
axman6
So you've addressed maybe half the essential features of the claim, and that
clearly makes all of it obvious? What about the rest? Is it obvious to do all
these things in the way claimed? Do you have _proof_ this it is obvious to do
so? The law doesn't work based on opinion, it works on proof first, and
evidence when proof is lacking. You can call it bullshit all you want, but
until you have something to back it up, you're just talking shit.

~~~
VikingCoder
> The law doesn't work based on opinion, it works on proof first, and evidence
> when proof is lacking.

Yeah, and I have enough of a background that my opinion is evidence.

That was simple, wasn't it?

If we found an acknowledged expert in the domain, their opinion would be very
strong evidence indeed.

Let me put it this way: the goal of establishing a patent system was to
encourage public disclosure of methods. A time window was granted to the
patent holder to make exclusive use of the material, but after that, to revert
to the public domain.

This patent application ADDS NOTHING THAT IS NOT OBVIOUS to the public domain.
That's my opinion, and I think I have enough of a background in the domain
that my opinion is evidence.

Your argument is that, if I were MORE of an expert in the domain, I might
suddenly realize that the claims are more subtle and inventive, than I can
discern as a journeyman in the domain?

And yes, you keep cleverly asking for a link, but that's presuming that prior
art is the only way to defeat a patent. An idea can be both NEW (or phrased to
sound new) and OBVIOUS to a practitioner. In which case, your asking for a
link is a strawman argument.

------
woodchuck64
Forbes article with some background,
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2012/07/09/riding...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2012/07/09/riding-
the-wave-of-artificial-intelligence/)

The incredibly banal Kato Kaelin interviews Leslie Spring and Mimi Chen (at
about 7:30 minutes) <http://www.tubeguru.com/video/9311> Are these two
musicians, vocalists, or founders of cutting edge AI Cognitive Code
Corporation? Or ALL of the ABOVE??

------
noonespecial
I'm thinking that once you've got a patent on strong AI, you more or less have
a patent on everything. It's a method and process for doing, well, everything
a human ever could or would do.

------
jandrewrogers
There are hundreds of patents on "artificial intelligence". All of them are
worthless gibberish.

Labeling something "artificial intelligence" does not make it so, and the
patent office has little interest in what you label the invention as long as
you describe the process in a manner that meets their criteria for
patentability.

------
e3pi
Trade Secret.

If you've a worthy AI engine/algorithmic break-through, software has the
hugely greater advantage over physical inventions by securing it behind the
API front-end. Nothing gained by filing a patent and everything to lose.

