High threshold for fearmongering solvency deficits—algorithms are no different from other tools and will not warp patent law.

The article has shown that AI techniques represent computational methods of problem solving enabling partial automation of inventive activity. As such, the application of such techniques cannot be prejudicial for the allocation of the inventor entitlement to a natural person. As long as a human specifies instructions that determine how the input-output relation is derived through computation, and as long as computers are bound by such instructions, there is seemingly no reason why AI-aided ‒ allegedly ‘AI-generated’ ‒ inventions should be treated under patent law differently than inventions assisted by other types of problem-solving tools and methods as far as inventorship is concerned. Instead, the use of such techniques should be a matter of the assessment of inventive step.

As we do not personify the laws of physics or chemistry, neither should we attribute a mystic personality to computational processes carried out according to the laws of mathematics and statistics. Even though it became common to use the language that anthropomorphises algorithms, such tendency was viewed as ‘an obstacle to properly conceptualizing’ legal and societal challenges posed by AI techniques, as well as misguiding the policy priorities. If computers only execute the problem-solving mechanism ‒ defined in this paper as instructions as to how the input-output relation should be derived through computation ‒ the distinction between human and ‘non-human’ (algorithmic) ingenuity is simply pointless.

While the views on the human-machine interaction in the process of problem solving presented here are not claimed to be conclusive, this paper calls for an in-depth inquiry that would elucidate under what conditions a computer is able to solve technical problems ‘on its own’. Not only the potential of such techniques, but also the time horizon need to be clarified. Prospects that automatic programming would threaten the very existence of IP rights have been discussed in legal literature at least since 1970s. Yet, neither at that time, nor more recently have concerns regarding artificial entities endowed with cognitive autonomy materialised. If the advent of Artificial General Intelligence is as uncertain and distant as AI designers currently predict, it appears to be more beneficial to turn attention to more pertinent issues arising in relation to IP law as it applies to AI techniques, and to examine more comprehensively its actual role in AI innovation.