Artificial Intelligence: Can We Automate Fureka Moments?: That'S The Goal of This Swiss Company's Ai-Powered Invention Tech

Abstract

JUST OUTSIDE LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND, in a meeting room wallpapered with patent drawings, Ioannis Ierides faced a classic sales challenge: demonstrating his product's advantages within the short span of his customer's attention. Ierides is a business-development manager at Iprova, a company that sells ideas for invention with an element of artificial intelligence (AI). ¶ When Ierides gets someone to sign on the bottom line, Iprova begins sending their company proposals for patentable inventions in their area of interest. Any resulting patents will name humans as the inventors, but those humans will have benefited from Iprova'sAI tool. The software's primary purpose is to scan the literature in both the company's field and in far-off fields and then suggest new inventions made of old, previously disconnected ones. Iprova has found a niche tracking fast-changing industries and suggesting new inventions to large corporations such as Procter & Gamble, Deutsche Telekom, and Panasonic. The company has even patented its own AI-assisted invention method. ¶ In this instance, Ierides was trying to demonstrate to me, an inquisitive journalist, that Iprova's services can accelerate the age-old engineers' quest for new inventions. “You want something that can transcribe interviews? Something that can tell who's speaking?” he asked. While such transcription tools already exist, there is plenty of room for improvement, and better transcription seemed a fine example for his purposes.