Thought about patenting it, but the entire idea of a patent is the ability to enforce a monopoly. I will never be able to inspect the insides of any commercial AI in the field, so as to allege an infringement on my patent.

Do not do this. Patents are not good protection, and a good enough algorithm is much better kept a secret.

This is what's wrong with our patent system. Imagine if all those great minds who came up with theorems you had to learn in 4-6 years of college decided to patent them.

Math should not be patentable. It's a crime.

Actually most of them have been dead for a long time so it wouldn't really matter, but I agree with you some things should not be patentable.

On the other hand imagine a world without patents and you'd probably get a world fill with trade secrets and that is even worse, at least a patent guarantees that the idea will pass to the public domain after a certain period. Would the world benefit if technology was segmented and kept secret like the coca-cola formula?

But seriously that is a great discussion for different thread.

At least patents are only 20 years, copyright is forever.

Copyright isn't forever. It originally expired 17 years after the death of the author. Unfortunately Disney pushed for extension of copyrights every time their key copyrights (Micky mouse & friends) were about to expire and have been able to push extending them quite unreasonably.

Right, Disney has effectively made copyright forever by making it last more than a lifetime.