You have a great AI or machine learning idea — so, you founded, or are thinking of founding, an AI startup.
But, why did you found your startup?
I believe that it’s for the same reason that I founded my startup, KISSPatent: you want to make the world, or at least your part of it, a better place.
To do that, your startup will need to change the world.
AI and Machine Learning are still in their infancy — every AI idea will change the world somehow because the field is so new. Every AI idea is needed in order to make the world a better place for all of us.
The use of AI in organizations, governments, security frameworks, energy, and natural resource management, etc., is drastically on the rise.
There are so many challenges that we face today — climate change, malnutrition, disease, etc., and ultimately, every AI idea will help us face these challenges, even if indirectly.
Dangerous Jobs
While experts disagree on when and how much artificial intelligence (AI)-powered robotic technologies will ultimately impact human workforces, it's clear that today’s career paths, as well as those of future generations, will be forever changed due to the introduction of AI.
Dangerous jobs, for example, are starting to be replaced with AI-powered robots. The removal of explosives, such as mines and bombs, is extremely hazardous work, and robots are being trained to handle these types of jobs.
Coal mining, considered by many, one of the most dangerous jobs in the world is training robots to extract, transport and secure coal from underground mines. Risks to health from coal mining include mine collapses and exposure to toxic chemicals and fumes, among others — it’s a profession notorious for the number and severity of injuries.
If this isn’t changing the world for better, I don’t know what is.
But, where did these AI robots get started?
Many different researchers have contributed to robotics in ways which led to our current ability to start replacing humans with robots for such dangerous jobs.
For example, I heard Manuela Veloso once give a fascinating talk last year on her multi-year project to teach robots to be autonomous. Prof. Veloso is the head of the Machine Learning Department in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Her work involves machine learning, computer vision, mechatronics (mechanical and electronic components operating together, which is essential for robotics), autonomous movement, and more.
She started working in this area in the 80’s and only in the past few years have robots become both truly autonomous and capable of safely interacting with humans in a non-restricted environment.
Such long term, incremental work has final yielded robots that can replace humans in hazardous situations — and win World Robot Football Cups!
Perhaps we were not born to work dull, dangerous, repetitive jobs; we were born to follow virtue and knowledge. Perhaps AI will be the technology that will change the world and help humanity reach its full potential, making us our best selves.
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Translating Human Languages
Since computers first started operating, one dream was to have a universal translator for human languages.
Initial efforts in this area were disastrous, as computer scientists tried to use rule-based engines to translate between human languages. Although human languages do follow rules, they also have many exceptions and context related meanings. So, rule-based engines didn’t work.
Other approaches, such as statistical analysis, were tried and were found to be more useful but still have many problems.
The thing is, it’s a super complex technology.
Two years ago, translation technology would produce something that, at best, would let you get a general understanding of what the text was about — but in most cases, a professional translator would tell you they would rather just translate from scratch because they couldn’t understand a lot of the output.
Today’s neural nets are super accurate — even without human intervention. And for a growing amount of materials and categories, human translators only need to make a few corrections to a machine translation, in order to get a human-quality translation.
This has been made possible by the switch to neural networks for machine translation — sometimes known as deep learning — adopted by the most advanced machine translation tools.
Google, Bing, and Amazon now all use neural machine translation in their translation engines.
What Does This Have To Do With Patents?
Well, a lot, actually.
Google has about 4000 patents and applications in human language translation alone, and many are quite specialized, like US20170083511 — Automatic Translation of Digital Graphic Novels.
Even Google has over 4,000 patents and applications for AI
The field of neural network applications to computer vision has many thousands of patents as well.
One example is CN104573731B — Fast Convolution Neural Network-Based Target Detection Method (from China), which can be read in translation now, because of Google’s automated translation algorithms.
The two major areas in functional applications of artificial intelligence are natural language processing (14% of all AI-related patents) and speech processing (13%). That’s amazing!
Leaps in computational power are extending the AI revolution to beyond big multinationals and impacting businesses and academic organizations the world over. Ultimately, almost every activity and sector will benefit from the use of AI.
In their quest to stay on top of the Silicon Valley food chain, familiar tech and retail giants are dipping their toes in world-changing-AI to execute diverse strategies.
Amazon leverages AI technology to analyze and predict your shopping patterns.
Google uses machine learning and pattern recognition in its search and facial recognition services as well as natural language processing for real-time language translation.
Microsoft’s Cortana is powered by machine learning, allowing the virtual assistant to build insight and expertise over time.
Apple is notoriously tight-lipped about their AI research, but it’s safe to say Siri is only the tip of the iceberg.
Facebook uses artificial intelligence to suggest photo tags, populate your newsfeed, and detect bots and fake users.
And guess what? They’re all protected, from top to bottom, with patents.
The basic importance of artificial intelligence is undeniable and is increasing every day. It will change our world both inside and outside the workplace. If you want to change the world, embrace these new technologies.
We’re here to help you stay ahead of the curve — contact us so we can protect your world-changing AI ideas!
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