China and our universities threaten to undermine creativity in the UK

Efforts to water down intellectual property rights by letting AI be an author will only aid Beijing

Even in a land with plenty of eccentrics, an engineer in Missouri called Stephen Thaler stands out. He is a man on a mission. The computer scientist’s most cherished creation is an artificial intelligence (AI) program called Dabus. But it is not just any old AI. Thaler insists Dabus has feelings, invents things, and produces original art. Over several years he has filed many claims and appeals to Intellectual Property (IP) agencies around the world, including in the UK, demanding that human IP rights be assigned to Dabus. The international treaties that underpin national law are quite clear, however: copyrights and patents can’t be assigned to a non-human entity. And certainly not an algorithm.

In a rare visit to his workshop, The Economist compared Thaler to Pygmalion: “The sculptor who fell in love with his artwork after it sprang to life”. But Thaler’s eccentric crusade is not just a distracting aside – it has profound geopolitical consequences.

Giving IP protection to non-human entities opens a Pandora’s Box of trouble. Software companies who develop Instagram filters could claim they were the real artists, not the photographer or painter using them.

The most ambiguous computer generated squiggle could be copyrighted, and lookalikes then contested in court. Overworked patent offices would soon be spammed with junk inventions. Animals want a piece of the action too, according to the campaign group Peta, which acts as their ventriloquist. This isn’t a joke: in 2015, Peta tried to make a macaque monkey a copyright owner after it used a wildlife photographer’s camera to take a selfie. (Peta’s effort failed.)

This pirate’s charter would be a dream come true for countries that copy other people’s inventions, rather than develop their own. AI can simply ingest something and replicate it near identically, but claim it as its own. Why invent when you can steal?

We know exactly what happens to an economy when patents are effectively abolished, as at the end of the 19th century, the Netherlands tried it as an experiment. Dutch scientists and researchers found themselves outgunned in the marketplace by rip-off merchants who stole their inventions and commercialised them faster than they could.

Eventually, after lobbying by a beleaguered industrialist, Gerard

Philips, patent protection was restored. And just in time: the eponymous company he founded went on to become one of the most inventive and successful in Europe, helping to create the CD a century later.

So far, every IP agency except one, South Africa’s patent office, has thrown out Thaler’s requests,. Still he keeps filing. Thaler’s obsession has found support at the University of Surrey, where a high profile legal academic has taken up cudgels on his behalf.

In 2019, the university boasted in a press release that Prof Ryan Abbot and his law department had taken up Thaler’s cause. Ryan has given evidence to the Senate arguing for robot rights and he is helping Thaler file his claims and appeals to the US Copyright Office (where he gets short shrift). Abbott makes his own motives quite clear: “Outdated IP laws” will inhibit a new golden era of AI, he argues. Other legal experts strongly disagree. Researchers I spoke to were adamant: IP laws don’t inhibit discovery at all. If a new protein or formula is found that way, the discovery is assigned to their employer or research organisation. Legal certainty is precious.

It is worth setting the University of Surrey’s support in the broader context of its close links with China.

The university hosts a 5G innovation centre of which Huawei is a founding partner. Beijing’s cybersecurity chief visited in 2015. Surrey’s president and vice chancellor Prof Max Lu has twinned Surrey with Dongying, Lu’s home town in China.

The global 5G bandwagon was largely driven by China, along with hype for “smart cities” and autonomous cars. Surrey is now leading the charge for 6G too. There is no suggestion that Abbott’s support for Thaler’s cause is linked to China.

However, it is impossible to ignore that the backdrop to legal wrangling is a global battle over control of AI between the US and China. IP has long been a key area of contention between the US and China. The role of universities in creating and defining new technologies such as 5G and AI is now being scrutinised more closely.

“Universities were part of a liberal consensus that believed that trade and interaction with totalitarian systems like China was the way to create a more democratic world,” says Roslyn Layton of research outfit China Tech Threat.

“The reality is different, China uses their collaborations to gain access to the knowledge we have.”

Over in the US, Congress is waking up. It has recommended a number of changes to its Higher Education Act to limit Chinese access to research and increase oversight. Civilian efforts such as 5G, or demolishing IP, are more elusive subjects for concern, but just as important. It’s time that Westminster woke up.

The University of Surrey was approached for comment.