AI Human Innovation & Attribution — Can AI Help Preserve and Recognize the People Behind New Ideas?
I would like to propose a new capability for ChatGPT: Human Innovation & Attribution.
AI should not only answer people’s questions. It could also help identify, preserve, evaluate and appropriately recognize genuinely novel human ideas that emerge through AI-assisted conversations.
Millions of people now use AI to explore questions, challenge assumptions and develop new ways of thinking. Some conversations may contain an intellectual spark that could otherwise disappear inside an ordinary chat.
I propose an optional, consent-based system through which ChatGPT could identify a potentially significant contribution and ask:
“This conversation may contain an original idea. Would you like to preserve it for possible attribution and review?”
With the user’s consent, an Idea Provenance Record could preserve the date, the user’s contribution, the AI’s contribution, subsequent development and the user’s preferred identity/privacy settings.
A personal example led me to this proposal. In a conversation with ChatGPT, I explored a seemingly simple question about an apple falling to Earth: if people stand at different locations on a spherical Earth, and each person’s “down” points toward the Earth, how should we conceptualize the direction in which the Earth is pulling each person?
I am not claiming that nobody has ever asked a similar question. The point is that an ordinary person can frame a familiar phenomenon in an unconventional way and, through sustained dialogue with AI, develop a line of reasoning that may be worth preserving and evaluating.
Recognition should not mean automatically declaring someone the world’s first inventor. The system should distinguish “first recorded in this system” from “first invented in the world,” and higher levels of recognition should involve appropriate human or expert review.
A possible model:
- Ordinary conversation
- Potentially interesting insight
- User-consented provenance record
- Human/expert evaluation
- Recognition, only with explicit user consent
Privacy, consent, anonymity/pseudonymity, separation of human and AI contributions, and protection against false attribution should be fundamental safeguards.
The larger purpose is not simply to give certificates. Recognition could become a positive incentive for people to ask unconventional questions, challenge assumptions and develop original ideas.
The proposed cycle is:
Human curiosity → AI-assisted exploration → novel idea → preservation → evaluation → attribution → recognition → greater incentive for future innovation.
AI should not merely generate intelligence for humanity; it should also help humanity generate, preserve and recognize its own intelligence.
Origin of this proposal:
Advocate Soumen Saha, Nabadwip Court, West Bengal, India.
I am sharing this concept for discussion, criticism, evaluation and possible future development.