China tops Generative AI patent applications, says UN - Generative AI news

Generative AI News: According to the U.N. Intellectual Property Agency, China has requested far more patents than any other nation in the field of Generative AI, with the United States coming in far second.

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, technology was connected to roughly 54,000 inventions between the years of 2010 and 2023. This technology has the potential to increase productivity and accelerate scientific discoveries, but it also raises questions about jobs and labor.

According to WIPO, more than 25% of those inventions were made in the past year, demonstrating the technology's phenomenal rise and interest since generative AI shot to prominence in late 2022.

This new, first-of-its-kind patent report attempts to monitor patent applications as a potential barometer of artificial intelligence trends. It ignores artificial intelligence in general, which includes things like facial recognition and autonomous driving, and concentrates only on generative AI.

A humanoid robot Xiao Qi is on display during the 2024 World Intelligence Expo at the National Convention and Exhibition Center (Tianjin) on June 20, 2024 in Tianjin, China. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

WIPO Director-General Daren Tang told reporters, "WIPO hopes to give everyone a better understanding of where this fast-evolving technology is being developed, and where it is headed."

More than 38,200 innovations in generative AI originated in China in the ten years beginning in 2014. Compared to the United States, which had roughly 6,300, that is six times more. South Korea (4,155), Japan (more than 3,400), and India (1,350) were the next closest countries.

With the aid of programmes like Google Gemini, Baidu's Ernie, ChatGPT from OpenAI, and Google Gemini, users can generate text, images, music, and other types of content. Numerous industries, including the life sciences, manufacturing, transportation, security, and telecommunications, have used the technology.

Some critics worry that GenAI may eventually take the place of humans in certain types of jobs or inappropriately appropriate human-generated content without paying creators fairly or adequately.

After entering the market later than other countries, China has made an effort to overtake ChatGPT owner OpenAI as well as American tech giants Microsoft, Alphabet's Google, and Amazon in the development of large language models (LLM).

When ChatGPT was able to produce responses to user prompts that resembled those of a human, it took the world by storm in November 2022.

Chinese tech behemoths Baidu and Alibaba introduced their own LLMs last year in an attempt to take on their American rivals.

China unveiled a three-year "action plan" in May to boost national computing capacity, strengthen AI chip standards, and develop generative AI in an effort to further its technological and economic advancement.

China and Gen AI patents between 2014 and 2023.PNG

As with other categories of patent applications, GenAI patent quantity does not necessarily translate into quality, according to WIPO officials. It's difficult to predict at this early stage of technology which patents will be valuable to the market or revolutionize society.

Tang remarked, "Let's see how the data and the developments unfold over time."

Although China and the United States are frequently viewed as competitors in the development of artificial intelligence, American tech companies are actually leading the world in the creation of the most advanced AI systems.

Research manager Nestor Maslej of Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence stated, "Looking at patents just paints one part of a narrative," adding that patent approval rates can vary depending on a nation's laws.

According to Maslej, who edits Stanford's annual AI Index, which gauges the state of technology, "when you look at AI vibrancy, a very important question is who's releasing the best models, where are those models coming from and, at least by that metric, it seems like the United States is really far ahead."

This year's AI Index shows that in 2023, American institutions produced sixty-one well-known machine-learning models, outpacing the 21 from the European Union and the 15 from China. France held the highest number of EU members with eight.

A different metric indicates that the US also has the most "AI foundation models"—big, flexible, and well-trained models such as GPT-4 from OpenAI, Claude 3 from Anthropic, Gemini from Anthropic, and Llama from Meta.

In terms of new AI startup formations and private AI investments, the United States has outperformed China, despite China being the leader in industrial robotics.