Question

Subject: Professional ethics in computing

1. How will our notions of intellectual property change if computers become capable of creative work?

Answer 1

Why is intellectual property predominantly anthropocentric? Many philosophical and other reasons exist for this. John Locke in his 17th-century work on natural rights, for instance, considered that it is in the common interest that people should have a natural right to what they produce and the results of their labour. There are also many different economic rationales.

The protection of intellectual property is essential for economic advancement. If the results of the intellect were not protected then this may disincentive people from manufacturing the products and providing the services that the market relies on. Human progress would ultimately suffer.

This gives rise to a question concerning the value of “intelligence”. Much rests on this valuable capacity, including progress. It should be protected as a value in itself and that is, indeed, one of the justifications for intellectual property. For this reason, maybe it is right that machines with AI should be recognised as capable of having copyright in order to protect the significance that we give to intelligence.

It is worth noting that many strides have been made in recent decades when it comes to such machines. In the 1970s, Harold Cohen, a British artist, wrote about “machine generated art” and developed software, AARON, which produces spectacular, abstract imagery.