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Dr. Stephen Thaler has done something that few have done in decades – made Philosophy professors suddenly relevant. He filed patent applications around the world that named an artificial-intelligence (AI) device as the inventor. The AI device is named “DABUS,” or Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience. Courts in the EU, US and UK have initially held that only humans can be inventors on patents, but South Africa and Australia have disagreed. The question of whether an AI device should be permitted to be a named inventor on a patent opens up a host of rich questions – including both policy and philosophical ones. What are some of the awkward implications of AI inventorship?