TO UNDERSTAND THE
CHINESE ROOM ARGUMENT, YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND
THE VIEW IT'S OPPOSED TO. NOW, THE VIEW IT'S
OPPOSED TO HAS TO DO WITH THE COMPUTATIONAL
THEORY OF THE MIND. WE USE COMPUTERS TO
SIMULATE THE HUMAN MIND, AND THERE ARE DIFFERENT
THEORIES ABOUT THAT. ONE VIEW SAYS, WELL, YOU
CAN SIMULATE THE MIND AS YOU CAN SIMULATE ANYTHING. I CALL THAT WEAK ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE OR WEAK AI. BUT THERE'S A MUCH
STRONGER VIEW THAT SAYS, NO, IF YOU'VE GOT A
SIMULATION, ONE THEY CAN PASS THE TURING TEST-- THAT IS,
CONVEYED IN A WAY THAT'S JUST LIKE A HUMAN BEING-- THEN IT
DOESN'T JUST SIMULATE THE MIND. YOU HAVE LITERALLY
CREATED A MIND. IF YOU DESIGN A PROGRAM THAT
CAN SIMULATE A HUMAN MIND SO THAT OTHER HUMAN
BEINGS COULDN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE
BEHAVIOR OF THE COMPUTER AND THE BEHAVIOR
OF A HUMAN BEING, THEN YOU'VE LITERALLY
CREATED A MIND WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. I CALL THAT VIEW STRONG AI. AND THAT VIEW SAYS, THE
MIND IS TO THE BRAIN AS THE PROGRAM IS
TO THE HARDWARE. SO IF WE'VE GOT
THE RIGHT PROGRAM, THEN IT DOESN'T MATTER
WHAT THE HARDWARE IS, BECAUSE WE'VE
CREATED A MIND. CREATING A PROGRAM JUST
IS CREATING A MIND, BECAUSE THE RIGHT PROGRAM WITH
THE RIGHT INPUTS AND OUTPUTS, AT THE IMPLEMENTATION
OF THAT PROGRAM, IS LITERALLY THE
OPERATION OF A MIND. OK. THAT'S STRONG AI. THE CHINESE ROOM
REFUTES THAT CLAIM. IT'S A VERY SIMPLE REFUTATION. WHENEVER ANYBODY GIVES YOU ANY
THEORY OF THE MIND, ALWAYS ASK, HOW WOULD IT BE FOR ME? SO THE CHINESE
ROOM ARGUMENT SAYS, IMAGINE THAT YOU CARRY
OUT THE PROGRAM, WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE
PROGRAM OF A MIND EXECUTING A CERTAIN KIND OF
MENTAL CAPACITY. AND [INAUDIBLE] IT FOR SOMETHING
THAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. I DON'T UNDERSTAND
CHINESE, SO I USED CHINESE. IF YOU UNDERSTAND CHINESE,
PICK SOMETHING DIFFERENT. PICK ARABIC OR SWAHILI OR
SOMETHING YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. NOW, HERE'S HOW I IMAGINE IT. I AM LOCKED IN A
ROOM, AND IN THIS ROOM ARE A LOT OF BOXES
OF CHINESE SYMBOLS. I ALSO HAVE A RULE BOOK WRITTEN
IN ENGLISH THAT TELLS ME WHAT TO DO WITH THE
CHINESE SYMBOLS. NOW, I GET IN LITTLE
BATCHES OF CHINESE SYMBOLS, AND I FOLLOW THE RULE
BOOK THAT TELLS ME WHAT I'M SUPPOSED
TO DO WITH THOSE, AND THEN I GO THROUGH
ALL THESE STEPS, AND I GIVE BACK LITTLE
BATCHES OF CHINESE SYMBOLS. NOW, UNKNOWN TO ME, THE
PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE ROOM CALL THE LITTLE BATCHES
THEY GIVE ME QUESTIONS AND THE LITTLE BATCHES
I GIVE THEM ANSWERS. THE RULE BOOK THEY CALL THE
COMPUTER PROGRAM, AND THE BOXES OF SYMBOLS THAT I USE, THEY
CALL THE COMPUTER DATABASE. ME, THEY CALL THE
COMPUTER OR, IF YOU LIKE, THE CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT. SO I'M THERE, AND I
GET IN THE QUESTIONS. I FOLLOW THE RULES
IN THE PROGRAM, AND I GIVE BACK ANSWERS. I GIVE BACK ANSWERS TO
THE QUESTIONS IN CHINESE. BUT, NOW, I DON'T
KNOW ANY OF THAT. I DON'T UNDERSTAND
A WORD OF CHINESE. AND WE SUPPOSE THAT THEY GET SO
GOOD AT WRITING THE PROGRAMS, AND I GET SO GOOD AT
SHUFFLING THE SYMBOLS THAT, AFTER A WHILE, I
PASS THE TURING TEST. MY ANSWERS ARE INDISTINGUISHABLE
FROM A NATIVE CHINESE SPEAKER. OK. NOW, HERE'S THE POINT. NO MATTER HOW GOOD THE PROGRAM,
NO MATTER HOW EFFECTIVE I AM IN CARRYING OUT THE PROGRAM,
AND NO MATTER HOW MY BEHAVIOR SIMULATES THAT OF
A CHINESE SPEAKER, I DON'T UNDERSTAND
A WORD OF CHINESE. AND IF I DON'T
UNDERSTAND CHINESE ON THE BASIS OF
IMPLEMENTING THE PROGRAM, NEITHER DOES ANY OTHER DIGITAL
COMPUTER ON THAT BASIS, BECAUSE THAT'S ALL
A COMPUTER HAS. A COMPUTER HAS A SET OF RULES
FOR MANIPULATING SYMBOLS. NOW, YOU CAN SEE
THE POWER OF THIS IF YOU CONTRAST WHAT IT'S LIKE
FOR ME TO ANSWER QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH AND WHAT
IT'S LIKE FOR ME TO ANSWER QUESTIONS IN CHINESE. IF YOU IMAGINE THESE GUYS ALSO
ASK ME QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH, MY ANSWERS WILL BE
INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM A NATIVE ENGLISH
SPEAKER, BECAUSE I AM A NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER. MY ANSWERS TO THE
QUESTIONS IN CHINESE ARE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM
A NATIVE CHINESE SPEAKER BECAUSE I'VE BEEN PROGRAMMED. ON THE OUTSIDE, I
LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME. I'M ANSWERING
QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH, AND I'M ANSWERING
QUESTIONS IN CHINESE. IT'S TOTALLY DIFFERENT
ON THE INSIDE. ON THE INSIDE, I UNDERSTAND
ENGLISH, NO PROBLEM. BUT ON THE INSIDE, I DON'T
UNDERSTAND CHINESE AT ALL. IT'S JUST MEANINGLESS SYMBOLS. SO WHAT'S THAT DIFFERENCE? IF IT LOOKS THE
SAME ON THE OUTSIDE, WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE
ON THE INSIDE? AND THE ANSWER, AGAIN,
I THINK, IS OBVIOUS. I KNOW WHAT THESE WORDS MEAN. IN ENGLISH, I HAVE MEANINGS
ATTACHING TO THE WORDS. NOW, IN CHINESE, ALL
I'VE GOT IS SYMBOLS, FORMAL, SYNTACTICAL OBJECTS. BUT, NOW, THAT'S ALL
ANY COMPUTER HAS. SO THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN
THE COMPUTER AND THE MIND IS THAT THE COMPUTER JUST
MANIPULATES FORMAL SYMBOLS, SYNTAX, SYNTACTICAL
OBJECTS, WHEREAS MINE HAS SOMETHING IN
ADDITION TO SYMBOLS. IT'S GOT MEANINGS. THAT'S NOT A WEAKNESS
OF THE COMPUTER. THAT'S WHY WE USE COMPUTERS. YOU CAN FORGET
ABOUT THE MEANINGS AND JUST GO WITH
THE SYNTAX, JUST GO WITH THE MEANINGLESS SYMBOLS. BUT IF YOU TALKING
ABOUT HUMAN MINDS, THE ESSENTIAL THING
ABOUT THE MIND IS IT DOESN'T JUST
HAVE FORMAL SYMBOLS. IT'S GOT MENTAL CONTENTS. SO, REALLY, THE
CHINESE ROOM ARGUMENT IS KIND OF A THREE-STEP
ARGUMENT IF SET IT OUT AS A FORMAL ARGUMENT. THE FIRST STEP IS, PROGRAMS
CONSISTENT ENTIRELY IN SYNTACTICAL ENTITIES. THE IMPLEMENTED PROGRAM IS A
SET OF SYNTACTICAL PROCESSES. BUT MINDS HAVE GOT
SOMETHING MORE. THEY GOT SEMANTICS. BUT NOW-- AND THIS IS WHAT
THE CHINESE ROOM SHOWS-- JUST HAVING THE
PROGRAM BY ITSELF ISN'T SUFFICIENT FOR THE
SEMANTICS, BUT FROM THAT, IT FOLLOWS THAT
PROGRAMS AREN'T MINDS. AND THAT'S ANOTHER WAY OF
SAYING STRONG AI IS FALSE.
I've heard this described before, and I don't think it refutes 'strong AI', as he puts it, at all. Here's why:
Searle describes himself as analogous to the CPU - which he is in this thought experiment. And he says he doesn't understand Chinese, which he doesn't. But nobody is claiming that the CPU running an AI understands what it is doing, any more than anyone claims the molecules within our synapses know what they're doing.
To put it another way: Searle puts himself in the box and contrasts his understanding of English with his ignorance of Chinese, and on that basis says there is no understanding going on in the box. But that's an insupportable leap. He isn't doing any understanding, but the combination of him, the rulebook, and the symbols are doing the understanding. He has made himself into just one cog in a bigger machine, and the fact a single cog can't encapsulate the entire function of the machine is irrelevant.
That was a great explanation but it's a fairly outdated analogy. Works for good old fashioned AI, not so much for new forms using machine learning.
We have no idea why AlphaGo made the moves it did when it beat the best Go player in the world. One move in particular completely dumbfounded the commentators and lots of people thought the AI must have made a mistake. It turned out to be a crucial move that enabled it to win the game.
No one showed AlphaGo how to play like that because nobody knew about it. Go players are now learning from it rather than the other way around. If the person in the Chinese room is teaching Chinese speakers how to speak Chinese, does the analogy still hold up?
Make a better test than Turing’s.
I always think of this comic when talking about The Chinese Room.
To me, it's pretty easy to keep kicking that can down the road.
This guy is using logical fallacies of someone who's religious.
Can someone help me with this? Because this does seem like an effective argument against the sufficiency of the Turing test, but not against strong AI itself. By which I mean: we do not have a sufficient understanding of consciouness to be certain it is not just as he describes- receive stimulus, compare to rules, output response-- but with much, much more complicated rulesets that must be compared against.
So yes, the chinese room refutes the idea that the a Turing complete computer understands chinese (or whatever input), it fails to demonstrate that from the outside (us as observers of the room) we can be certain that the box in questions is not conscious. I have a feeling that I just am taking this thought experiment outside its usefulness. Can anyone point me in the direction of the next step?
Due to limitations of human observation, is it not true that a sufficiently complex AI actually being sentient and one merely appearing to be sentient are functionally indistinguishable to us? The limitations of the human experience prove this to be true, as it is the case for how we consider other human minds.
In an almost Truman Show-esque analogy: Imagine that everyone in your life, except yourself, is an actor with a script. This script tells them what to do, what to say, how to portray every detail of their interactions with you in an almost infinite number of situations. In effect, artificially reproducing the experience of your whole life down to the tiniest of details.
How could you distinguish those people from your own consciousness, determine that they are genuinely sentient as you are, rather than following a script? They are essentially all "Chinese Rooms" themselves. Descartes famously created the maxim "I think, therefore I am" as a demonstration that only his own consiousness was provable. The same could be said here.
Break down the neurology of the human mind down to a granular enough scale, and you have basic inputs and outputs, simulatable processes on a sufficiently complex machine. Give someone the tools, materials, and enough time, and if you gave them such a model of a person's human brain, they could recreate it exactly. How is that any different to an AI?
The "context" that Searle refers to is just as syntactical as the rest of the operations a machine might simulate. We cannot prove that our own meanings and experiences are not equally logical, let alone those of an AI. He may state that he has greater context and meaning attached to his logic than that of a machine, but it could just as easily be simulated within his own neurones - a "program" running on his own organic brain.
"If you can't tell the difference, does it matter?"
The illusion of mind emerges from the operation of the rule book.
In the case of the human mind, the rule book has been created by a long process of evolution. Humans that had a defective rule book didn't reproduce that rule book further. And humans that had mutually compatible rule books that also promoted survival, could propagate those rule books.
The illusion of the Chinese Room emerges from philosophers over estimating their role in the operation of the Chinese Room.