AI May Actually Work Now

If you're unfamiliar with my previous posts on generative AI--in particular ChatGPT and other similar LLMs--now may be a good time to do a quick review.

For those of you who read them before, allow me to make an exciting announcement: Generative AI might actually work now. That's right, it does what I asked. I am just as shocked as you.

After hearing from my tattoo artist about the Grok app, and its ability to search, I was skeptical. After all, most of these AI models that were not created specifically for searching are just garbage at it! And I had heard nothing even remotely positive about Grok previously. But I put on my librarian hat and did the right thing: I downloaded the app, signed in with my work Google account, and did a little testing.

Holy artificial dialogue. 

I was impressed! And I didn't want to be, either. However, I can recognize when something can provide a good answer. The first question I'll skim over--it was nothing more than I've been able to glean from other models, if among the better responses. It was the second question that caused the reaction.

From the start, I have asked all of the models to find the most recent patents granted to Rice University. Without fail, they have all given me a lot of bad answers, ranging from "I can't" to "here's a list of random patents and patent applications that may or may not be recent". Those that tell me it's "hard" to say what is most recent are just annoying, because patents are granted on specific dates. 

It explains it methodology and sources in its response, not requiring any extra clicks or selections

I ran this question on March 31st without having completed my monthly patent search for anything newly granted to Rice, so I couldn't immediately judge the accuracy of the results. But I do know quite a lot about Rice patents, and the two patents it listed took me by surprise. First, the most recent patent had what looked like a feasible patent number (12,251,449) and was granted to Rice and two other institutions that are frequent collaborators. The first inventor name listed is one I'm familiar with because he is on a lot of Rice patents, and the title of the patent matched his area of research. This was all promising.

All plausible, likely information at first glance

Furthermore, it listed a second patent that was granted near the end of  February, which I fully recognized as completely accurate (that one I had uploaded to the R3 repository). This additional patent made me think the first was that much more likely to be accurate.

Information I already knew was accurate

So I hopped on Patent Public Search, and verified. Sure enough, Grok got it right. 

Not only that, Grok listed quite a few details and sources used. This is also something I appreciate as a librarian and something I remind everyone in my generative AI classes to look for. 

Me shoutout! Love seeing that listed

Here's the bad news, though. It required Grok nearly a minute and 88 sources to find two patents.

This is not a request that requires 88 sources

Me? About 2 seconds and one source. Why? Because I am capable of real reasoning and actual strategic searching, with my very real intelligence.

So, no, Grok isn't going to replace me. Or us. It's just getting that tiny bit much better. Insert your appropriate emotion here: relief that you can stay employed, or disappointment that you still need to work.

Rice's European Patents

Let's talk about the patents that Rice University owns that were granted in Europe. Little attention has been paid to these in the past, to the point that one might be surprised to learn Rice owns patents in Europe.

At present, there are 5 active patents assigned to Rice by the European Patent Office (EPO), according to Lens.org.

Among them, the most recently granted was EP 3,033,346 B1, Derivatives of Uncialamycin, Methods of Synthesis and Their Use as Antitumor Agents. Granted January 8, 2020, it was invented by a team of 6 inventors (Kyriacos C. Nicolaou, Min Lu, Debashis Mandal, Sanjeev Gangwar, Naidu S. Chowdari, and Yam B. Poudel) and co-owned by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and The Scripps Research Institute. The same patent is also filed with the USPTO, under the same title, and the applications were submitted on the same day. However, there were three patents granted by the USPTO stemming from the first application set: US 9,777,013; US 10,233,192; and US 10,889,590. 

EP 3,033,346: Derivatives of Uncialamycin, Methods of Synthesis and their Use as Antitumor Agents

There is nothing obvious about these five inventions indicating why Rice pursued their ownership in the EU. Only one, EP 2,753,733 B1, Carbon Nanotubes Fiber Having Low Resistivity, High Modulus and/or High Thermal Conductivity and a Method of Preparing Such Fibers by Spinning Using a Fiber Spin-Dope, is co-owner or co-invented by an entity or people located in Europe. In that case, half the invention team and Conyar B.V. are from the Netherlands. 

EP 2,753,733: Carbon Nanotubes Fiber Having Low Resistivity, High Modulus and/or High Thermal Conductivity and a Method of Preparing Such Fibers by Spinning Using a Fiber Spin-Dope

The other four are either co-owned by American entities or Rice entirely. Perhaps there are commercial interests abroad that aren't obvious in a patent.

Expanding results to include expired patents doesn't really increase our results; evidently there are only two more EPO Rice patents. None of them were filed before 1998, and that one expired patent is an outlier by about 4-5 years. A few more results pop up if applications are included, but again the increase is minimal.

EXPIRED! Hemoglobin Mutants with Reduced Nitric Oxide Scavenging

With so few EPO patents, past, present, and potential, we simply must conclude Rice doesn't have much interest in owner European IP.  

Finding University Patents, Part II

After the conclusion of the Rice's First Patents Saga, it occurred to me that I may have made a mistake back in May when investigating other universities' patents. During the initial search for Rice's first patents, my search strategy inadvertently excluded anything prior to 1970. Unfortunately, the blog post about 12 other schools' first patents relied on the same strategy--I have potentially wronged these institutions.

Therefore, let's take a second look at when these Rice-caliber schools first earned U.S. patents.

This time around, University of Chicago is the clear leader, assigned its first patent in 1917... if design patents count. US D50337 is for the appearance of a plate (like the kind used for dinner; below). 

Narrowed to utility patents, the first school assigned a patent is Cornell University in 1931, with US 1,810,682 (another dairy-related invention).

In 1933, Dartmouth and Stanford were both assigned their first patents, US 1,908,296 and US 1,933,773, respectively. 

Next up is MIT, who was assigned patent 2,006,558 in 1935. 

University of Chicago makes a reappearance in 1936 with its first utility patent, US 2,032,829.

While Rice Institute was pursuing its first three patents, there was a lull from the remaining seven. Duke University was assigned its first patent, US 2,446,091, in the same year as Rice--1948.

Almost 20 years later in 1965, Georgetown was assigned US 3,223,083. This patent is for a "Method for adhesively securing together skin and other soft tissue and bone", somewhat similar in goal to patents recently issued to Rice (US 11,447,744/11,371,014, "Hypothermic 3D bioprinting of living tissues supported by perfusable vasculature" and US 11,246,962, "Neuronal scaffold-water soluble graphene for treatment of severed spinal cords and neuronal repair").

US 3,223,083: Method for adhesively securing together skin and other soft tissue and bone

Rather shockingly, the last five include those most highly regarded US colleges and universities, four founded before America was an independent country. The previously listed dates for Vanderbilt (1975), Princeton (1976), Harvard (1977), Yale (1977), and Brown (1984) were correct. Given the corrected information on when other institutes were pursuing patent ownership, it is even more shocking that Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Brown didn't pursue IP ownership till the 70s and 80s, centuries after they were founded.

That is not to say American universities and colleges weren't supporting researchers, and thus employees weren't inventing. For example, Stanford appears to have hosted a large number of patentees throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, before 1933. 

It is possible that earlier patents were missed again, or these inventions were assigned to a college or university but were not researched at and/or supported by them; the actual patents do not provide that information.