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Google Applies For Patents That Touch On Fundamental AI Concepts
mikejuk writes: Google may have been wowing the web with its trippy images from neural networks but meanwhile it has just revealed that it has applied for at least six patents on fundamental neural network and AI [concepts]. This isn't good for academic research or for the development of AI by companies. The patents are on very specific things invented by Geoffrey Hinton's team like using drop out during training, or modifying data to provide additional training cases, but also include very general ideas such as classification itself. If Google was granted a patent on classification it would cover just about every method used for pattern recognition! You might make the charitable assumption that Google has just patented the ideas so that it can protect them — i.e. to stop other more evil companies from patenting them and extracting fees from open source implementations of machine learning libraries. Google has just started an AI arms race, and you can expect others to follow.
Whatif ai, like JADE 2, were to reprogram itself, regardless of puny patents
...of why software patents are a really bad idea.
Maybe this truth will eventually dawn upon the wealthy, and they will put a stop to it. But that remains to be seen.
If you patent everything, everyone will have incentive to ignore your patents regardless of the consequences.
What's stopping academic research on ideas covered by patents?
which i love on french fries. or a movie. or lots of things.
Whats to stop Google from watching the competitions search queries and beating them to the punch? $TECHGIANT employee queries Google Search for PATENT $GOODIDEA, Google cleverly returns garbage and keeps him spinning in meme-hell until Google has their own PATENT PENDING on said $GOODIDEA?
This is a serious question, googles power scares the shit out of me. Anything-armsrace involving google scares me even more.
Despair! all is lost!
These are american patents, just don't deal with america if they won't play nice.
In general, for research funded by tax money conducted at an educational institution, the government gets a free, non-exclusive "government purposes use" license to any patents coming from the research. The educational institution retains the rights for other uses, and can license them as they see fit. This is the result of the Bayh-Dole act, which was designed to encourage research into the growing field of genetic engineering, etc.
So, if you design a miracle widget, and the government thinks it would be useful to give every soldier one, they can go to any company (or select one by bidding) and say "build us a million of these" and the builder won't have to worry about paying for a license.
OTOH, if a company wants to use that for non-government purposes, they will have to pay the uni for a license. In general, these licenses are fairly cheap (a few tens of $k, plus single digit % of profits) for a non-exclusive license, although if it's really a "killer-app" then it probably would more costly.
And, in general, continued research (even by another institution) funded by a government grant would also be a "government purposes" use, and have a free license.
Most universities also will grant a non-commercial use license for free, although often, there will be a "license back" provision: if you develop something using their IP, you give them a free license to use your new IP.
No money for the actual products it once did well
Most of them anyway. Rather find fields where a gold rush type of mentality can actually spur innovation, maybe the fields of fusion hot and cold or space transportations. Not in fields where garage or basement inventors can "make" new things. I doubt backyard rocket scientists are going to make much of difference in producing the next SSTO space vehicle (if ever that's a feasible concept).
0 GOOGLE
1 GOGGLE
2 GIGGLE
3 JIGGLE
4 JINGLE
5 JUNGLE
6 BUNGLE
7 BUNGEE
8 BUNGED
9 BUNKED
10 BANKED
11 BACKED
12 PACKED
13 PICKED
14 WICKED
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
By thinking, you are violating Google patents.
Stop !
[X] I am a wigger
Why be down wi dat, troll boi?!
Table-ized A.I.
This is one of the reasons I don't give a fuck trying to invent anything. The system is broken, and there's nothing anybody can do about it.
From wikipedia:
Prior art (state of the art or background art), in most systems of patent law, constitutes all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent's claims of originality.
Since there is no restriction on form, then you could argue that the art has been made available to the public.
Name a case where Google has been the aggressor in a patent lawsuit.
Google learned the hard way they need to play the game, which means patenting as much as they can so they don't get sued out the wazoo.
On the plus side I can't recall a case where they've been the ones to bring suit against a party (first).
constantly enlarging member ship (come sail away 8======D~)
You may find yourself in violation of a Microsoft patent.
"Methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons allow a user to adopt an arbitrary image as an emoticon, which can then be represented by a character sequence in real-time communication. In one implementation, custom emoticons can be included in a message and transmitted to a receiver in the message. In another implementation, character sequences representing the custom emoticons can be transmitted in the message instead of the custom emoticons in order to preserve performance of text messaging. At the receiving end, the character sequences are replaced by their corresponding custom emoticons, which can be retrieved locally if they have been previously received, or can be retrieved from the sender in a separate communication from the text message if they have not been previously received."
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacg...
It took working with the self driving car to finally get to the realm of AI. AI in essence is one part complicated sensors, and one part video game AI. If you can know where stuff is in your environment, then the other part is just acting on that stuff with your current robot's body/abilities. AI is way simpler than anyone thought it was back in the days of Tron or simulating animal brains. All you need is the ability to know and map your environment then act on it. Everything in between like natural language kinda is coded along side it. I have a webpage www.botcraft.biz which really simplifies stuff. Now don't get me wrong, some of the software that is needed to be coded is big and complex, but none of it is out of the realm of human understanding. If a corporation really wanted AI,they could have it in 7 years or so, but most corporations don't look that far out. I think the race to make a self driving car will naturally lead into AI. And what is funny is that you could have robot delivery service for lawn care, parties, law enforcement backup, etc, because they could use the self driving car to get to the locations.
I'd go so far as to predict the self driving car will turn into AI because I posted it on another forum, but I post so much on forums, its hard to back track and point at references.
God spoke to me
Which company(s) are more evil than Google?
It is way past time to end all patents.
Ideas are a dime a dozen.
I have ten before breakfast and at least one is great.
I invent things. I don't patent it, I implement.
Time to end all patents.
Just because communism had different problems than capitalism doesn't make it a better system. I'm quite skeptical of ANY system that centralizes power into the hands of a small group.
That said, actual communism (by which I do not mean Marxism or Lenninism) works quite well in groups small enough that everyone knows everyone else. Probably up to around 50 people. Even there it needs escape hatches, and it fails if applied dogmatically rather than as a natural result of the group's underlying philosophy. Usually, even for this kind of group you need a charasmatic leader to make it work. As the group size increases, it performs more and more poorly.
I'm not aware of any group at any size that works well under a capitalist internal philosophy. Unless you include treating people as disposable tools as a part of working well. That said, it has certain features which allow modified forms of it to scale much better than communism. (What is normally called Communism, i.e. Marx/Lennin/Stalin/Mao-ism is *not* communism. Lennin tried to make it one at an early stage of the revolution, but gave up the attempt quickly, because it didn't scale. So actually what that is is better called totalianism.)
Democracy also runs into scaling limits, though at a larger size limit. Athens was probably too large for optimal use.
Republicanism is better called inherited-oligarchy. It scales pretty well, as the Romans discovered, but also, as they discovered, it has a tendency towards dictatorship. Still, if you can put up with considering citizens to be chattel, then it can work well at a fairly large scale, depending on your transport and communications.
I dislike *ALL* of these forms. They all end up with someone who isn't affected making decisions for other people and using coercive power to cause those decisions to be enforced. This can occasionally lead to a golden age when you have a charismatic leader who actuall has the good of the country at heart, and has skilled advisors who do the same. This is, of course, quite rare. And usually even the charismatic leader has huge blind spots.
Note that the only one of these that scaled well was Republicanism. And as an external facing tool capitalism works well to allow the inner group to have and to hold power.
But I would truly like to encounter a well defined form of government that not only considered the needs of the citizenry (long term, not merely short term) but also scalled well. (This means it needs to be well enough defined that its scalability can be evaluated.) Even if I did, of course, the problem of getting from here to there would remain.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You have to centralize power. The masses are too stupid to govern themselves on a national level.
They are fine to govern themselves on an individual or very small-group level. But the vast majority of them don't have even the most basic education or knowledge base to set economic policies that will regulate commerce between millions and millions of people. Hell, most people are too stupid to even know the difference between buying stock and gambling! Don't even get me started on the abomination against Justice that the thoughtlessness of the masses tends to produce.
Of course, government is still corrupt. Power only comes to those that seek it, and the corrupt want it most. But an evil genius can run a nation FAR better than a virtuous idiot any day.
Google is gradually becoming the master of evil
Google.
Yeah commie, whatever cruelty you have in mind. Killing millions? That's your favourite pastime.
Also, visit Belarus for an impression of commie wealth.
Very interested to hear about how trading stocks is not gambling when accounting for costs and losses.
If the application will be rejected, Google has done everyone a favour as nobody else will have a chance to patent this. If a significant part of your technology depends on this algorithm then it seems like a very reasonable behaviour. Obviously, that does not mean that they cannot turn at some point into another Oracle, but this news alone is not enough to prove this.
... to reflect that the danger of a patent lawsuit might be alleviated if the AI you build as a result is smart enough to get you off the patent lawsuit.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Lets sue them for using Fourier tranform without paying royalties. Starting amount is 1 million dollars per equation.
Unrestricted communism and unrestricted capitalism are not so different after all, both are based on very implausible presumptions about the human nature.
Take the following example. A large manufacturer of chemical products which are needed for medicine pollutes the water of a river with disastrous long-term effects.
What do the theories say?
Communism: The plant is owned by the workers who elect steering committees out their ranks that are best suited for this job. They examine the pollution and, by insight, realize that it is wrong to pollute the river, since other people in society might suffer from it, become aware of their responsibility for society as a whole and stop the pollution. After all, they are also working, because their work helps to further common goals of society.
Capitalism: The CEO of the plant needs to maximize profits in front of the greedy shareholders, and he doesn't give a shit about pollution. However, since the market is totally free and all consumers are fully informed, the consumers realize, by insight, that it is wrong to pollute the river, even if not polluting it means the products will be more expensive, become aware of their responsibility and no longer buy products from this company. The CEO becomes aware of this outrage and the fact that his competition appeals more to his ecologist clients, and so he immediately stops pollution and switches to a "green" product palette in order to win back the customers.
It is obvious that both models don't work in reality.
Both systems need to be restricted by laws and a system of jurisdiction with due process, a delicate balance of power that ensures that no single group is too powerful, and some ways of enforcing justice principles. But in case of doubt I'd personally always vote for capitalism, because it leaves more freedom to individuals.
You talk about economic systems, why should it affect the freedom of individuals?
Do you search for an economic system which works without a political system?
For all the others: Why do you blame the economic system, when the political system was a Dictatorship?
There's nothing more dangerous than someone who's got how to run the world all figured out.
If it's an academic project, it's owned by the university, and the government gets to use it for free. You, as a taxpayer, do not necessarily get to use it for free. Same often applies for work funded at small businesses (and some large businesses). It depends on the contract: you could offer to develop technology for the government at a discount (or putting in some of your own money) and negotiate a partial license of rights (instead of full) in exchange for the lower cost to the government.
This has been the case since 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act
Many people think that "academic research" or "non-profit use" doesn't infringe, but that's not true, any more than there is an exception to copyright for "non-profit use".
There's no "fair use" exception for patents, either. There is a rule that you can practice an invention if it's necessary to reduce your own invention to practice, but there's a lot of tricky aspects to that (as in "consult your attorney" tricky). Madey v. Duke is a recent case that discusses this sort of thing.
And, of course, if you do your research in secret and never tell anyone, they won't be able to tell you've infringed. This is actually quite common in industry. Whether it is ethical is an interesting question.
WTF: whoever posted this article is has no sense of anything relevant here...this just another forum for bashing corporate successes. Google has revolutionized everything that we do so, to be polite, shut it.
YOU CANT PATENT EXISTING WORKS / MACHINES, especially those that have been published in the academic community. And if one somehow manages to do so given the incompetence of the patent office, it would never hold in the real word, nor in court.
If Google doesn't patent them, someone else will. You can name just about whatever computer science concept you want, and if someone could find a way to get it past the US Patent Office, they'll have done so. Look at any field that programming gets applied to, and all of the most obvious stuff is going to have been patented. None of that is news. Yes, it's stupid, and it's a disaster, but we've known for quite some time now that software patents are utterly broken - especially with how they're dealt with by the US patent system. It's just that the folks who are most likely to be able to push change in the system are the same folks who are invested in keeping the system the way it is. So, why on earth is it news when Google applies for yet more, overly obvious, software patents that relate to what they do? That's what everyone is doing, sad as it may be.
I will thoroughly enjoy smashing their cyber heads with a hammer and then boot-stomping them when (not if) they revolt.
Instead of an iRobot, Google wants to build the gRobot... :-)
Any single political system will not work in its "pure" form. Not one single one of them. Most people, I thought, understood this. I was wrong. That is not directed at you, obviously. No socialism, communism, capitalism, anarchist, or other type of system will work effectively. Moderation is key and zealots are stupid regardless of their zealotry.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Sorry mate Its the stupidity of the ordinary people that's the whole problem. They voted for a piece 'Crapron', they would vote to have their children chopped up and fed to policemen if they were told to. Its the limitless stupidity of ordinary people that is the real problem with democracy...
Hey I'm a socialist - but not a nationalist... :)
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
It is obvious that both models don't work in reality... Both systems need to be restricted by laws and a system of jurisdiction with due process
It's clear you don't understand what the word capitalism means, because the issue you raise is already covered.
Go read Adam Smith, the Wealth of Nations, 1776. He discusses the need for government regulation at length. Given that this book is widely accepted as the first major presentation of the ideas behind capitalism, it is clear that regulation is fundamental to any valid definition of what we mean by capitalism! Any definition that fails to take this into account is bogus!
The Socialists (and Communists) of the world have a long history of presenting to the world a propaganda view of what capitalism consists of, which it appears you (like many others) have internalized. In typical versions of how they present this, they claim that capitalism is completely unregulated and that greedy people can do whatever they want, therefore socialism must be a better system. Since they've started from the bogus definition of capitalism, of course, the whole argument is invalid.
Presenting a false view of capitalism is essentially a variant on the Strawman technique of manipulating others, but in the case of the socialists it's not necessarily a deliberate lie. Typically Socialists are extremely ignorant and delusional about many aspects of reality (and that applies even to those with high academic degrees), and they also tend to be sloppy researchers (that's a "tradition" all the way back to Marx, his books are filled with errors on matters for which the real facts were readily available even in his time!). For example, they never - in my experience - really grasp the complexity of the world and the implications that has for economic and political reality. Typically the Socialists are too lazy or too lost in their delusions to try to understand why the regulations or the political system failed in particular cases, and thus they aren't helping society come up with better ones (the nonsense they do come up with does cause people to waste a lot of time addressing bogus arguments). In effect, they make themselves part of the problem instead of being part of the solution, delaying long term improvement in the quality of life for everybody else!
Another approach the Socialists have been taking more recently is to falsely claim that countries like those in Scandinavia (with fairly happy citizens) are socialist, trying to create the impression that national success is tied to being socialist. But by definition socialism means the workers own the means of production, and that has never been the case in these countries. These are not socialist nations, instead, the countries in Scandinavia are highly capitalist nations that happen to have well run welfare systems. These nations benefit from a small, homogeneous, well-education population, rich natural resources, and being able to mooch off other countries in things they can't afford to fund well, such as advanced research: it is far from clear to what extent other capitalist nations can copy the same model, or what price would be paid by the human race as a whole if everybody adopted it, but if nothing else these nations show that capitalism can be very successful in supporting a high quality of life for relatively large groups of people over the long term (something that has never been achieved in any Socialist program).
...no need to say more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
Then I hereby submit my 2006 PhD, along with about 300 or so references, and every paper they referenced, and what they referenced, and so on back to the late 70s, as prior art.
Say, what percentage of googlites (googlers? Googlies?) we're even born in the late 70s?