How to ‘troll for good’: Leveraging IP for AI governance

A new Science paper proposes using existing intellectual property law to create and enforce AI regulation, an approach much faster than traditional legislation.

“Leveraging IP for AI governance” by Cason Schmit, Meg Doerr and Jennifer K. Wagner:

Our model leverages two radically different approaches to manage intellectual property (IP) rights. The first is copyleft licensing, which is traditionally used to enable widespread sharing of created content, including open-source software. The second is the “patent troll” model, which is often derided for suppressing technological development.

Copyleft licensing is designed to spread virally. Examples include the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the Creative Commons ShareAlike license.

This idea has been discussed in the forum before. See A Viral License for AI Safety: The GPL as a Model for Cooperation by Ivan Vendrov and Nat Kozak.

Another related project is Responsible AI Licenses (RAIL) and their paper "Behavioral Use Licensing for Responsible AI."