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Can AI invent?

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Artificial intelligence systems are used for an increasing range of intellectual tasks, but can they invent, or will they be able to do so soon? A recent series of patent applications for two inventions that are claimed to have been made by an artificial intelligence program are bringing these questions to the fore.

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Fig. 1: Pictures generated to illustrate the models.

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Acknowledgements

T.W. is supported by the Australian Research Council via a Laureate Fellowship FL200100204.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney, Kensington, New South Wales, Australia

    Alexandra George

  2. School of Computer Science & Engineering, UNSW Sydney, Kensington, New South Wales, Australia

    Toby Walsh

  3. CSIRO Data61, Eveleigh, New South Wales, Australia

    Toby Walsh

Authors
  1. Alexandra George
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  2. Toby Walsh
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Contributions

T.W. ran the computational studies. A.G. and T.W. both wrote and revised the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Alexandra George or Toby Walsh.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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George, A., Walsh, T. Can AI invent?. Nat Mach Intell 4, 1057–1060 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-022-00582-5

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