Artificial Intelligence In John Searle's Chinese Room Argument

Decent Essays
John Searle’s Chinese Room argument is an argument against the possibility of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is arguing that you cannot make an artificial system or even a machine that would have actual genuine intelligence. The most you can make out is a machine or simulation that simply goes through the motions and does not actually think or is capable of being knowledgeable on its own. The actual argument is a thought experiment. In this experiment, Searle invites his participant to imagine that someone comes up with a computer program that is supposed to allow a computer running the program to conduct a conversation with somebody in some dialect of a Chinese language. Instead of imagining that the computer program is going to converse …show more content…
You would be able to ask it questions by typing, and it replies by printing the answers on the screen or paper. Some may be fooled in the sense that they think they are talking to an actual intelligent being who understand Chinese, but rather they are conversing with something much less. Searle’s argument states that imagine that the program is, instead of typed in to the computer to make the computer run the program, instead written out in English and the program is followed by John Searle, an actual human being and not a machine. Searle then works with the program that is written out in a book and the way in which he runs the program, or follow the program, is by being inside of the Chinese Room and messages in Chinese are sent in to the room through a slot. Though the participant at the time, hypothesizing it is Searle, does not really understand Chinese and only understand English, receives these messages in Chinese and does not understand them at all. He tries to translate these Chinese symbols with a book that he has that translates them in to English so that he can try to send out the proper Chinese symbols to respond to. Now, if …show more content…
Running the program suffices for understanding Chinese, and a computer that runs the program will thereby understand Chinese. Although John Searle is actually running the program without him having any knowledge in understanding Chinese, so therefore it cannot be true that anything that runs the program will understand Chinese because Searle is running the

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