As artificial intelligence plays an increasingly important role in the R&D process, the premise that invention is a uniquely human characteristic is being challenged. Patent offices and courts around the world have recently been grappling with the question of whether an AI system can be the inventor of a patent. This has been prompted by Dr. Stephen Thaler's applications to designate his AI system (known as'DABUS') as the inventor of patents filed in multiple jurisdictions. Most recently, the appeal board of the European Patent Office (EPO) refused Dr. Thaler's patent applications because there was no valid inventor. Dr. Thaler, as part of the Artificial Inventor Project, is pursuing parallel patent applications across over fifteen jurisdictions which designate his AI system, DABUS, as the inventor.

On May 13, 2021, the London Disputes Week conference ("LIDW21") hosted a panel of thought leaders to discuss the intersection of artificial intelligence ("AI") and dispute resolution ("DR"). The panel was moderated by Dan Wyatt of RPC and featured Charles Morgan, national co-leader of McCarthy Tétrault's Cyber/Data Group, Trish Shaw of Beyond Reach Consulting, Sophia Adams Bhatti of Simmons Wavelength Limited and Steve Shinn of Disputed.iou. The panel was part of the session entitled, "The use of technology and AI in the future of dispute resolution in London." This article summarizes some of the key points raised during this session. LIDW21 is an international conference with a focus on centering London, England as the global centre for dispute resolution.

AI is defined as software that is developed with one or more specified techniques and approaches (including machine learning and deep learning) that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, generate outputs such as content, predictions, recommendations or decisions influencing the environments they interact with.