Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!spf
From: spf@clyde.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Who owns the output of an AI?
Message-ID: <16527@clyde.ATT.COM>
Date: Thu, 12-Nov-87 17:23:49 EST
Article-I.D.: clyde.16527
Posted: Thu Nov 12 17:23:49 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Nov-87 11:50:33 EST
References: <1778@svax.cs.cornell.edu> <181@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Sender: nuucp@clyde.ATT.COM
Reply-To: spf@moss.UUCP (Steve Frysinger)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Whippany NJ
Lines: 26

In article <181@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>In article <1778@svax.cs.cornell.edu>, houpt@svax.cs.cornell.edu
>(Chuck Houpt) writes that the new British intellectual property law will
>rule that the output of an AI program will belong to the person running
>the program, not the person who wrote the program.

Let's look at it this way:

If you invent, say, an electronic circuit which is a big seller, should
your parents get a share?  After all, they built you, supplied you during
your system development, and instilled you with most of your knowledge
(sometimes through hired instructors, of course).  And, come to think
of it, THEIR parents taught THEM what they needed to know to
successfully raise you to invent the circuit.

At what point did you become completely independent of them and begin
"thinking" on your own?  Hard to say; probably nobody thinks COMPLETELY
on their own.  Witness the William James effect, wherein one has
an "original" idea, which in fact was an idea heard somewhere else
but "forgotten" because at the time it wasn't interesting.
This is one reason why the notion of patenting/copyrighting ideas
and information is so bizarre.  How would you feel if you were the
professor who taught circuit design to Shockley (of transistor fame)?
Maybe a little cheated, maybe not.

Peace, Steve