Chinese Room Problem
Marcus du sautoy tries to find out using the chinese room experiment.
Chinese room problem. In this thought experiment a person in the chinese room is passed questions from outside the room and consults a library of books to formulate an answer. Can a computer really understand a new language. Now he recieve all the messages posted through a slot in the door written in chinese language. There is a room.
David chalmers writes it is fairly clear that consciousness is at the root of the matter of the chinese room. The chinese room is a clever hans trick clever hans was a horse who appeared to clomp out the answers to simple arithmetic questions but it was discovered that hans could detect unconscious cues from his trainer. Searle actually believes that his argument works against non classical computers as well but it is best to start with the digital computers with which we are all most familiar the chinese room. Intentionality is a philosophical term for the power of thoughts to be about something.
He will process all the symbols according to program instructions and produces the. Even the system as a whole couldn t go from syntax to semantics and hence couldn t understand the meaning of the chinese symbols. It is one of the best known and widely credited counters to claims of artificial intelligence ai that is to claims that computers do or at least can someday might think. He calls his argument the chinese room argument note.
According to searle s original presentation the argument is based on two key claims. Searle responds to the systems reply with the semantic argument. This is a. Searle asks you to imagine the following scenario.
The chinese room argument is a thought experiment of john searle 1980a and associated 1984 derivation. An argument against computers ever being truly intelligent. Taken from the hunt for ai. His chinese room argument is intended to show that even if the turing test is a good operational definition of intelligence it may not indicate that the machine has a mind consciousness or intentionality.
The argument to be clear is not about whether a machine can be conscious but about whether it or anything else for that matter can be shown to. The chinese room conundrum argues that a computer cannot have a mind of its own and attaining consciousness is an impossible task for these machines. Similarly the man in the room doesn t understand chinese and could be exposed by watching him closely.