Patenting Artificial Intelligence

It is hard to avoid the AI revolution that is taking place around us. Indeed, in a lot of areas this revolution is already mature. We have come a long way from teaching computers to play draughts and chess or tell the differences between cats and dogs and it often seems like your smartphone knows more about what where you are likely to go next (and what the weather, traffic and COVID infection rates are there) than you do.

This "revolution" is not just evident in the high-tech, computer-focused fields that are traditionally associated with AI. The latest breakthrough in biological or pharmaceutical research is increasingly likely to have resulted from a "random forest" or an SVM as from a well-plate or wet assay. Computer scientists are in demand not only to create game worlds in the latest MMORPG but to sift, organise and exploit the vast data resources available from genome projects, customer loyalty cards and social media.