EPO Review 2018 - Machine Understanding: Neural Networks, Machine Learning And Artificial Intelligence

A recent EPO report¹ talks about "A new era of technological development characterised by digital transformation", based on "information and communication technologies" ("ICT") and amounting to a "fourth industrial revolution". The present review looks at three specific aspects of ICT – neural networks, machine learning and artificial intelligence – which the EPO report groups together as "enabling machine understanding".

Developments of these aspects may relate to their implementing hardware and software or to any of the extensive range of their possible applications, for example from assisting medical diagnosis to image recognition to natural language understanding to operating wind turbines to playing the game of go. This means that capture of relevant patents and applications using the International Patent Classification (IPC) is challenging, as incidentally illustrated by the EPO report.