Machines, ethics and copyright
ChatGPT poses difficult questions in the field of authorship as well as in the field of ethics in science (and also in other fields where independent work is required).
We are getting closer to the moment when machines will be able to create independently (we are not there yet, although the result produced by a machine can already look quite similar to a human-made creation). In addition, this technology opens up endless ethical questions in the field of science, since this technology enables the “creation” of works that people can pretend to have created without this tool. These are similar ethical problems as when persons who do not meet the conditions for authorship are listed under articles or when one of these persons is omitted. For the theoreticians who have been and will write about these challenges, these are the most interesting career questions, but in reality commercial players and machine owners in particular are pushing for intellectual property rights to be granted to products produced by machines as well.
Another political point of interest: while we are still debating this in the democratic parts of the world, Ukraine has changed the copyright law in the whirlwind of war, and according to the new law, “creations” produced by machines are protected by related rights (copyright-like rights). It is not talked about very loudly, but it points to the strange backgrounds and foregrounds of the war in Ukraine.
In June 2024, the Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21) network and Communia, published research findings in a publication entitled Copyright as an Access Right: Concretizing Positive Obligations for Rightholders to Ensure the Exercise of User Rights, which was authored by professors Christophe Geiger and Bernd Justin Jütte.
On Thursday, July 4, 2024, TV SLO 1 aired a new show Conversations about the Future with the subtitle Alternative Futures, in which three guests reflected on the dilemmas and opportunities of an increasingly digitized society. In addition to Dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič from ODIPI, were also anthropologists Dr. Dan Podjed from ZRC SAZU and computer engineer Dr. Blaž Zupan from the Faculty of Computer Science and Informatics UL.
In the first week of July 2024, the Summer Course on International Copyright Law and Policy took place in Amsterdam, which was also attended by the young researcher Laura Pipan from ODIPI.
On Friday, June 14, 2024, the second day of the Global Conference on AI and Human Rights took place at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana. Dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič gave a lecture as part of the 14th panel entitled AI and Intellectual Property: Revolution or Robbery?