The Patent Office Is Hunting for an Artificial Intelligence Expert

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently launched a recruitment effort to hire its first-ever senior-level artificial intelligence expert to advance the agency's applications of the emerging technology and provide technical expertise to keep employees on the leading edge. In a conversation with Nextgov, USPTO's chief information officer provided a look inside the search to fill the new role and explained how it all fits into the agency's broader vision around modernization. "We need to figure out how we can use those algorithms to the best of our abilities," CIO Henry "Jamie" Holcombe said Friday. "We've seen an explosion in AI submissions and so AI is now maturing to a point to where it actually can be used--we don't want it to be a buzzword." USPTO's mission is to award patents to inventors and businesses and register trademarks for products and intellectual property. When Holcombe took on the agency's top information technology management role earlier this year, the office already had many AI-related efforts underway.