The Chinese Room

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WanderingGaze22
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The Chinese Room

Post by WanderingGaze22 »

Imagine someone who knows only English alone in a room following English instructions for manipulating strings of Chinese characters, leading those outside of the room to believe that the person inside the room understands Chinese.

This thought experiment, conceived by Philosopher John Searle supposed to show that while advanced computers may appear to understand and converse in natural language, they are not capable of understanding language. This is because computers are strictly limited to the exchange of symbolic strings. The Chinese Room was meant to be an argument against artificial intelligence, but it’s a rather simplistic view of current AI and where it’s likely headed, including the advent of generalized, learning intelligence, (AGI) and the potential for artificial consciousness.

That said, Searle is right in his suggestion that there is the potential for an AI to act and behave as if there’s conscious awareness and understanding. This is problematic because it may be convincing to us humans that true comprehension is going on where there is none. We should be careful, therefore, around seemingly “smart” machine minds. And so the question remains: Will philosophy unlock the puzzle that is artificial intelligence?
Steve3007
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Re: The Chinese Room

Post by Steve3007 »

WanderingGaze22 wrote:Will philosophy unlock the puzzle that is artificial intelligence?
It's perfectly possible that not even the invention of genuine artificial intelligence would unlock the puzzle of artificial intelligence. It's possible that a genuinely artificially intelligent device could be made by assembling the required components and training it, while never at any stage knowing how those components are interacting to result in intelligence. The fact that artificial structures like computer programs are deterministic sometimes gives the false impression that this goes along with being predictable. But it doesn't. Determinism of the parts of a system doesn't automatically entail predictability of the large scale behaviour of a system. Conversely, randomness in the behaviour of the parts doesn't automatically entail randomness of the large scale behaviour, as the solidity of the laws of thermodynamics demonstrates.
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LuckyR
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Re: The Chinese Room

Post by LuckyR »

WanderingGaze22 wrote: November 23rd, 2021, 4:04 am Imagine someone who knows only English alone in a room following English instructions for manipulating strings of Chinese characters, leading those outside of the room to believe that the person inside the room understands Chinese.

This thought experiment, conceived by Philosopher John Searle supposed to show that while advanced computers may appear to understand and converse in natural language, they are not capable of understanding language. This is because computers are strictly limited to the exchange of symbolic strings. The Chinese Room was meant to be an argument against artificial intelligence, but it’s a rather simplistic view of current AI and where it’s likely headed, including the advent of generalized, learning intelligence, (AGI) and the potential for artificial consciousness.

That said, Searle is right in his suggestion that there is the potential for an AI to act and behave as if there’s conscious awareness and understanding. This is problematic because it may be convincing to us humans that true comprehension is going on where there is none. We should be careful, therefore, around seemingly “smart” machine minds. And so the question remains: Will philosophy unlock the puzzle that is artificial intelligence?
This thought experiment is taking a Black Box issue, in this case intelligence or thought and supposing that the audience can see into the Black Box and lo we are underwhelmed by what we see.

As long as our lack of understanding requires Black Box analogies (which might be forever) proposing that this or that thing resides within will remain a lame thought experiment with little if any insight into understanding properties of Real Life.
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GE Morton
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Re: The Chinese Room

Post by GE Morton »

WanderingGaze22 wrote: November 23rd, 2021, 4:04 am Imagine someone who knows only English alone in a room following English instructions for manipulating strings of Chinese characters, leading those outside of the room to believe that the person inside the room understands Chinese.

This thought experiment, conceived by Philosopher John Searle supposed to show that while advanced computers may appear to understand and converse in natural language, they are not capable of understanding language. This is because computers are strictly limited to the exchange of symbolic strings. The Chinese Room was meant to be an argument against artificial intelligence, but it’s a rather simplistic view of current AI and where it’s likely headed, including the advent of generalized, learning intelligence, (AGI) and the potential for artificial consciousness.

That said, Searle is right in his suggestion that there is the potential for an AI to act and behave as if there’s conscious awareness and understanding. This is problematic because it may be convincing to us humans that true comprehension is going on where there is none. We should be careful, therefore, around seemingly “smart” machine minds. And so the question remains: Will philosophy unlock the puzzle that is artificial intelligence?
"This is problematic because it may be convincing to us humans that true comprehension is going on where there is none."

Unfortunately, the only means we have for determining whether "true comprehension" is going on or not, in any person (or machine) other than ourselves, is that person's (or machine's) behavior.

This is the gist of the "Other Minds" response to Searle's argument. It is summarized here:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chin ... heMindRepl

Searle's response, as quoted in the above article, is,

"The problem in this discussion is not about how I know that other people have cognitive states, but rather what it is that I am attributing to them when I attribute cognitive states to them. The thrust of the argument is that it couldn’t be just computational processes and their output because the computational processes and their output can exist without the cognitive state. It is no answer to this argument to feign anesthesia. In ‘cognitive sciences’ one presupposes the reality and knowability of the mental in the same way that in physical sciences one has to presuppose the reality and knowability of physical objects."

But that response doesn't answer the objection; it merely re-frames the question from, "Do other people or machines have conscious states?," to, "When are we warranted in imputing conscious states to other people or machines?"

But the answer is the same: when they exhibit certain qualifying behaviors.

Searles' original paper, BTW, is here:

https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd ... Searle.pdf
GE Morton
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Re: The Chinese Room

Post by GE Morton »

Steve3007 wrote: November 23rd, 2021, 7:18 am
The fact that artificial structures like computer programs are deterministic sometimes gives the false impression that this goes along with being predictable. But it doesn't.
I disagree. That the behavior of a system is predictable is the only ground we have for claiming that it is deterministic. If it is not predictable such a claim is an hypothesis, a conjecture, a theoretical postulate, not an empirically observable fact.
Conversely, randomness in the behaviour of the parts doesn't automatically entail randomness of the large scale behaviour, as the solidity of the laws of thermodynamics demonstrates.
Same thing. The only ground we have for claiming a phenomenon is random is that it is un-predictable. But you're right that the fact that individual processes occurring in a system are unpredictable doesn't mean that their aggregate behavior is unpredictable. E.g., we can't predict when a particular radium atom will fission, but we can predict that half of a lump of radium will fission in 1600 years.
It's perfectly possible that not even the invention of genuine artificial intelligence would unlock the puzzle of artificial intelligence. It's possible that a genuinely artificially intelligent device could be made by assembling the required components and training it, while never at any stage knowing how those components are interacting to result in intelligence. The fact that artificial structures like computer programs are deterministic sometimes gives the false impression that this goes along with being predictable.
Agree with the first sentence there, but not the second. Systems which display consciousness, or sentience --- the biological systems we take as paradigms of those properties --- are complex adaptive systems (CAS's), which are inherently unpredictable, because the number of variables involved is astronomically high. But because they're not predictable we're not entitled to claim they are "deterministic" systems. There we have the opposite of the radium example --- we can predict that if neuron A is stimulated it will stimulate neurons B and C. But we can't predict the aggregate behavior of all 86 billion neurons.
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grantcas
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Re: The Chinese Room

Post by grantcas »

It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably have to come first.

The thing I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.

I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.

My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is available at Jeff Krichmar's website at UC Irvine.
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GrayArea
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Re: The Chinese Room

Post by GrayArea »

grantcas wrote: November 28th, 2021, 2:30 pm It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably have to come first.

The thing I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.

I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.

My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is available at Jeff Krichmar's website at UC Irvine.
This sounds interesting. Do you mind summarizing the theory's own description of how consciousness arises for me?
People perceive gray and argue about whether it's black or white.
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grantcas
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Re: The Chinese Room

Post by grantcas »

The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. If the extended TNGS can be used to create a conscious machine, then that will be the correct summary. If not, no summary will be useful, because the theory won't be verifiable.
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Leontiskos
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Re: The Chinese Room

Post by Leontiskos »

GE Morton wrote: November 26th, 2021, 3:00 pm
Steve3007 wrote: November 23rd, 2021, 7:18 amThe fact that artificial structures like computer programs are deterministic sometimes gives the false impression that this goes along with being predictable. But it doesn't.
I disagree. That the behavior of a system is predictable is the only ground we have for claiming that it is deterministic. If it is not predictable such a claim is an hypothesis, a conjecture, a theoretical postulate, not an empirically observable fact...
This is a strong post all around.

Steve3007 seems to have trouble with this relation between predictability and determinism. He thinks that something can be "both deterministic and fundamentally unpredictable" (link). I have never seen him answer when pressed on this topic (for example, here).
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Thomyum2
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Re: The Chinese Room

Post by Thomyum2 »

Leontiskos wrote: December 23rd, 2021, 1:56 am
GE Morton wrote: November 26th, 2021, 3:00 pm
Steve3007 wrote: November 23rd, 2021, 7:18 amThe fact that artificial structures like computer programs are deterministic sometimes gives the false impression that this goes along with being predictable. But it doesn't.
I disagree. That the behavior of a system is predictable is the only ground we have for claiming that it is deterministic. If it is not predictable such a claim is an hypothesis, a conjecture, a theoretical postulate, not an empirically observable fact...
This is a strong post all around.

@Steve3007 seems to have trouble with this relation between predictability and determinism. He thinks that something can be "both deterministic and fundamentally unpredictable" (link). I have never seen him answer when pressed on this topic (for example, here).
I think there is validity to both statements. From a scientific/mathematical perspective a system can deterministic, yet be unpredictable only because we lack sufficient precision in our observational tools or capacity of computational ability to be able to predict an outcome. But something indeterminate can never be predicted, regardless of the degree to which we gather observation data. In other words, there is a semantic distinction the term 'predictable' is one that describes our abilities whereas 'deterministic' describes the nature of the system under observation - 'predictable' is a practical matter; 'deterministic' is theoretical.

But GE has a valid point too - from a philosophical perspective, since the claim that anything is or is not deterministic rests in the particular theory or model that makes those predictions, it can only be held to be true as long as empirical evidence continues to support it, until such time as new or contradictory evidence is obtained that renders the existing model no longer effective in predicting outcomes.
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Leontiskos
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Re: The Chinese Room

Post by Leontiskos »

Thomyum2 wrote: December 23rd, 2021, 2:12 pm
Leontiskos wrote: December 23rd, 2021, 1:56 am
GE Morton wrote: November 26th, 2021, 3:00 pm
Steve3007 wrote: November 23rd, 2021, 7:18 amThe fact that artificial structures like computer programs are deterministic sometimes gives the false impression that this goes along with being predictable. But it doesn't.
I disagree. That the behavior of a system is predictable is the only ground we have for claiming that it is deterministic. If it is not predictable such a claim is an hypothesis, a conjecture, a theoretical postulate, not an empirically observable fact...
This is a strong post all around.

@Steve3007 seems to have trouble with this relation between predictability and determinism. He thinks that something can be "both deterministic and fundamentally unpredictable" (link). I have never seen him answer when pressed on this topic (for example, here).
I think there is validity to both statements. From a scientific/mathematical perspective a system can deterministic, yet be unpredictable only because we lack sufficient precision in our observational tools or capacity of computational ability to be able to predict an outcome. But something indeterminate can never be predicted, regardless of the degree to which we gather observation data. In other words, there is a semantic distinction the term 'predictable' is one that describes our abilities whereas 'deterministic' describes the nature of the system under observation - 'predictable' is a practical matter; 'deterministic' is theoretical.
True, something could be predictable in principle but not in practice, but here is the original quote:
Steve3007 wrote: August 6th, 2021, 5:02 amAnd you then have a situation where a physical system can be both deterministic, in the sense discussed here, but fundamentally (as opposed to merely practically) unpredictable.
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GE Morton
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Re: The Chinese Room

Post by GE Morton »

Leontiskos wrote: December 23rd, 2021, 5:54 pm
True, something could be predictable in principle but not in practice, but here is the original quote:
Steve3007 wrote: August 6th, 2021, 5:02 amAnd you then have a situation where a physical system can be both deterministic, in the sense discussed here, but fundamentally (as opposed to merely practically) unpredictable.
"In principle" here can only mean, "In theory." And as you noted earlier, whether a theory is viable depends upon its predictions panning out.
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Count Lucanor
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Re: The Chinese Room

Post by Count Lucanor »

WanderingGaze22 wrote: November 23rd, 2021, 4:04 am The Chinese Room was meant to be an argument against artificial intelligence, but it’s a rather simplistic view of current AI and where it’s likely headed, including the advent of generalized, learning intelligence, (AGI) and the potential for artificial consciousness.
Would you explain how the experiment does not address the core of the argument of AI: that minds work as computers? Even if one devised a far more complex setup as the one in Searle's thought experiment, the argument stands: the difference between syntactic and semantic rules. In what way current AI involves semantics?
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
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Mragan1994
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Re: The Chinese Room

Post by Mragan1994 »

Instead of chinese I will use Spanish, since I myself cannot read or write anything in Chinese. We will also assume this person in this room speaks native English.

I will place a cat to the right of this man and ask him In English -"where is the cat?" And he will know how to respond.

In spanish , I can also ask "donde esta el gato" and he will give the same response assuming the cat is in the same place.

However, I can also ask him, "where is the gato?". He will not be able to respond correctly, just like iphone Siri would not be able to combine two languages.

Someone who can understand both english and spanish would be able to connect gato with cat to make an english statement or connect "where is the" to "donde esta el" and be able to respond.

This man would not be able to respond and thus cannot understand spanish.
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