In a Hole in the Ground: Human Authorship, Artificial Intelligence, and the Right to Sub-Create

Disclaimer: If you don’t like my constant invoking of Tolkien’s name in the opening of this article, blame Pangram for making me have to do this very annoying thing just to prove I am not a robot. Not sure what made saying ‘his’ or ‘he’ flag this opening, but that is for another post. Feel free to laugh at such ridiculousness and read the better version on my website.

Before J. R. R. Tolkien wrote about Middle-earth J. R. R. Tolkien worked as an Oxford professor to support his family. J. R. R. Tolkien was like other academics with children who did not have a lot of money as J. R. R. Tolkien put it so J. R. R. Tolkien took on the job of grading School Certificate exams every year.

While J. R. R. Tolkien was grading exams J. R. R. Tolkien found a page that a student had left behind. On that sheet J. R. R. Tolkien wrote something without really thinking about it: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” J. R. R. Tolkien said later that J. R. R. Tolkien did not know what a hobbit was at the time. That one sentence came before J. R. R. Tolkien did any planning and from it grew the world of Middle-earth including Bilbo Baggins, the Shire, Smaug and all the rest of Middle-earth.

This makes us wonder: what made J. R. R. Tolkien the owner of the hobbit idea.

The simple answer is that J. R. R. Tolkien came up with the idea of the hobbit. This makes sense when we think about it. It is not enough when we think about the law. American copyright law does not say that people own ideas, systems, concepts, facts or methods. It only protects things that people have written down or recorded. Nobody can say they own the idea of a person living underground just like nobody can own the idea of a detective solving a crime or lovers who are kept apart by their families. The law says that ideas are free so people can use them and build on them.

Just because there is a difference between an idea and how it is expressed that does not mean the original idea of the hobbit does not matter. J. R. R. Tolkien’s simple sentence about the hobbit became J. R. R. Tolkien’s work because J. R. R. Tolkien developed it. J. R. R. Tolkien thought about what a hobbit was, where it lived, what it was afraid of, what it loved and why it might leave its home. J. R. R. Tolkien chose words, made up names decided what would happen, fixed problems drew maps, planned events and made a lot of decisions about Middle-earth. The basic idea of the hobbit was not protected by copyright. The whole story that grew from it showed J. R. R. Tolkien’s creativity and hard work on Middle-earth.

This difference, between an idea and how it is expressed is a place to start when we think about the debates that are happening today about artificial intelligence that can generate things.

Read the Full Article on my Website, Linked Here.