Chinese Room Properly Translating the Chinese Room Essay

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Chinese Room

Properly Translating the Chinese Room

John Searle's thought experiment concerning the "Chinese Room" attempts to disprove that so-called "strong-AI" (artificial intelligence that demonstrates "true" thinking and "understanding") could ever possibly exist. The argument is relatively straightforward: Searle imagines a computer running a program that allows it to communicate in written Chinese -- the program is capable of recognizing Chinese characters that are entered into it and of formulating a response in written Chinese that makes sense and appears conversant. This program is so perfect that it can convince a native Chinese speaker that the responses, generated solely through a series of complex rules or algorithms that the computer/program uses to react to the Chinese characters it receives as input, are coming from an actual human Chinese speaker. Next, Searle imagines that if he were placed in a room with this computer and if written Chinese communications were slipped under the door, he would be able (through use of the computer) to deliver appropriate responses to these communications without ever understanding a word of Chinese. As the human respondent (in this case Searle) is delivering Chinese responses without any understanding, he concludes that the computer program is working similarly, generating automatic if complex responses without actually understanding the language.

While Searle's though experiment is elegant and might appear inviolate at the outset, a close examination reveals several problems with this thought experiment that diminish if not eliminate its capacity for demonstrating the supposed impossibility of strong AI. First and foremost, Searle makes a significant leap in logic when he determines that his own lack of understanding is analogous to the computer/program's lack of understanding.

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Searle essentially asserts that his feeding communications to the computer and receiving responses to slide back under the door is the same type of automatic and rote process that the computer itself would be performing, yet the two actions are enormously different in terms of complexity and in terms of product and effect. Searle's "non-understanding" action is purely mechanical, consisting of moving paper from where it is slipped under the door to the computer and then moving the output pieces of paper back to the door. Only part of computer and program's actions are mechanical, and then the least impressive and least "intelligent" parts -- those that move the paper, conduct the printing, etc. The processing of language requires a new task each and every time, and though the rules applied might be the same they would never be applied in the same pattern or lead to the same output (assuming different inputs). This action is thus fundamentally different from….....

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