On August 30th, the Seoul administrative court confirmed the cancellation of a patent application that had an artificial intelligence (AI) as an inventor.
The court said “AI, which is not a natural person under the law, is highly likely to be a product, so its independent rights capacity cannot be recognized.”
A United States federal judge also ruled on August 18 that AI creations are not subject to copyright, which confirmed the guidelines issued by the U.S. Copyright Office in March.
The chatbot Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (Chat GPT), which was released in November 2022 by Open AI, amassed more than one million users in two months, garnering global interest.
Many people worldwide, including students, have begun using this tool to their advantage.
AI is beginning to spread into fields such as the military, medicine, and numerous other sectors.
Despite the promise that AI shows in these fields, there are several legal and ethical issues that AI poses.
Students began submitting school assignments, mostly essays and problem sets, with answers directly copied from Chat GPT.
Consequently, many teachers forbade their students from using Chat GPT for their assignments and began to use the tool GPT Zero to detect whether a student had used the chatbot.
Though there are evidently students and others who simply use AI as a tool for inspiration or as research, debates have emerged on the extent to which such generative AI models should be used.
Many AI developers utilize online materials without acquiring a license for training their models while developing them for commercial purposes.
For instance, “Stability AI” took images from Getty Images to train their image-generating AI, Stable Diffusion, without acquiring a license.
Getty Images filed a lawsuit against Stability, stating that it had infringed upon the copyright of their images.
The European Union is now implementing regulations that force generative AI companies to disclose the copyright of the original data that was used to operate the system to prevent copyright infringement while training AI.
Accidents that occur due to autonomously driving cars will also bring up complex legal issues.
Currently, the law has challenges in determining who- or what- is responsible for the accident, and additional laws must be established to determine clear definitions of guilty parties.
Governments need to establish clear regulations regarding the deployment and operation of autonomous vehicles or face future legal nightmares.
Autonomous vehicles face situations where they need to make split-second decisions that could have ethical consequences, such as choosing between protecting its occupants or pedestrians.
Another issue is how rapid technological advancements lead to a higher turnover of hardware, potentially contributing to electronic waste.
If AI systems are trained on biased or incomplete data, algorithmic bias may perpetuate and even amplify existing social and environmental inequalities.
For example, the AI facial recognition model showed the lowest accuracy for Black women from ages 18-30, with error rates up to 34% greater than those of tests done on lighter-skinned males.
AI systems also collect and analyze vast amounts of data without explicit consent or knowledge from individuals.
This raises concerns about data use, storage, and protection.
The storage and processing of sensitive personal data by AI systems increase the risk of data breaches, which can lead to identity theft, financial fraud, and other security issues.
Striking a balance between the collection of data for AI training and protecting individuals’ privacy is crucial for ensuring public trust and acceptance of AI technologies.
The legal and ethical issues surrounding AI implementation necessitate a cautious approach.
Historical evidence has provided insights into the potential risks of uncontrolled AI deployment.
Thus, it will be essential to strike a balance between technological advancement and responsible, ethical, and environmentally conscious deployment of AI systems.
Addressing these legal and ethical issues requires collaboration among technology developers, policymakers, ethicists, lawyers, and the broader society.
Seokhyun Chin
Grade 11
Choate Rosemary Hall