Is the Chinese Room argument (Searle,1980) a suitable metaphor for AI? Kevin Warwick

Prof. Kevin Warwick interviewed by Francesca Ferrando. These interviews are conceived as a project related to my PhD in Philosophy, on Posthumanism, Artificial Intelligence and Gender. You can check more info on my academic page: http://uniroma3.academia.edu/FrancescaFerrando
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CONVERSATION #10
In the Chinese Room argument (1980) John Searle holds that a program cannot give a computer a "mind" nor an "understanding", regardless of how intelligently it might make it behave. He concludes that "I can have any formal program you like, but I still understand nothing". What do you think of the Chinese room argument? Do you believe that the same metaphor can be still applied to some of the latest development of AI, such as robots with biological neural networks?

Category:

Education

Tags:

• kevin
• warwick
• john
• searle
• roger
• penrose
• chinese
• room
• artificial
• intelligence
• machine
• robots
• humans
• technology
• posthuman
• cyborg
• transhumans
• francesca
• ferrando
• philosophy

[Valagetti]

Thanks, helped me with my philosophy essay!

[gml142]

@motters2001 Searle wasn't talking about a room with a translation engine, he was talking about a room that could converse and communicate enough to pass a Turing test. And for goodness sake, translations are as old as language! Google translate is a sophisticated version of a translation dictionary, nothing more.

[motters2001]

Google showed Searle to be right, in that there now exists a system to translate between English and Chinese and where it's doubtful that this system actually understands anything about these languages, or has anything resembling consciousness. Consciousness probably requires cross-modal associations, including pre-linguistic or non-linguistic concepts, which a system restricted to manipulating text isn't able to recreate.