US and China Lead the Artificial Intelligence Patents’ Race: United Nations

According to a recent study done by the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), China and the United States are at the forefront of the global competition to dominate artificial intelligence (AI).

The study discovered that tech giant IBM holds undoubtedly the biggest AI patent portfolio with 8,920 patents, ahead of Microsoft with 5,930, and a group of mostly Japanese tech firms.

China represented 17 of the top 20 academic institutions associated with AI patenting and was mainly strong in the fast-growing area of "deep learning" – a machine-learning technique that incorporates speech recognition systems.

General Francis Gurry, WIPO Director told in a News conference, "The US and China obviously have stolen a lead. They're out in front in this area in terms of numbers of applications and in scientific publications."

US President Donald Trump has blamed China of pinching American modernizations and technology and has hit business tariffs on $234 billion of Chinese goods to punish Beijing.

China in December stubbornly contradicted "slanderous" accusations from the US and other allies criticising China for economic inspection and taking away intellectual property and company secrets.

Gurry recognized there were allegations about the conducts of China. But, he said there was no doubt it had grasped the worldwide intellectual property system, with the world's largest patent office and the highest number of domestic patent applications.

"They are serious players in the field of intellectual property," he said.

Sneaking intelligence

The study shows that AI-linked patent filings form just 0.6 percent of the global patent group, but it was expected that the number might grow with extensive implications.

Patent applications in machine learning, that contain techniques used by ride-sharing services to reduce deviations, averaged yearly growth of 28 percent between 2013 and 2016, the last year for which data is available, because of an 18-month period before confidential applications are widely unveiled.

Much of that development achieved from deep learning and it overtook robotics as it has swollen from 118 patent applications in 2013 to 2,399 in 2016.

Computer vision was the single most popular AI application, used in self-driving cars, and stated in 49 percent of all AI-related patents.

According to the WIPO study, companies were far more vigorous than universities and other public research institutions in filing AI-related patents, accounting for 26 out of the 30 top applicants in the field.

The study is done on data from 2016, but Gurry said there was no reason to trust the astronomical rush in such filings had not continued after that.

"The general direction that we see … is that this is infiltrating most things," Gurry said.

He worried as it was not up to WIPO to make a judgement call on whether the new technologies were good or bad. But the UN agency planned to offer a wealth of experiential data to inform important and much necessary societal discussions around AI and its inferences.