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> The man isn't the program. The man is just executing the program. That is the whole point. The external observers don’t know if there is a machine in the roo

> The man isn't the program. The man is just executing the program. That is the whole point. The external observers don’t know if there is a machine in the room. They just see Chinese characters coming under the door. How do they tell if the man knows Chinese or not? Or if he is just emulating a machine that does? Likewise if we see a computer that is producing “consciousness looking” responses, how do you know if it is the computer that is conscious or just the people who created the content for the training data? Since the computer is modeling them.

jwalton 4y ago
> How do they tell if the man knows Chinese or not? Or if he is just emulating a machine that does? But this is exactly the wrong question; assume for a moment a computer program can be concious. Does the man know Chinese, or is he emulating a concious computer program that knows Chinese? Either way there would be a conciousness involved, so nothing about this situation disproves that a program can be concious - there's no contradiction here, and thus logically speaking, no proof. The claim seems to be that because the man doesn't suddenly understand Chinese, the program can't be concious, but this is confusing the program and the computer. If conciousness is computational in nature, then "I" am a program running on a meat-based computer. But it's not the meat (the computer) that's concious, it's me (the program). If the man doesn't understand Chinese, that's fine - he's just the computer the program is running on. It's the program that will be concious. The man just has to fetch the next instruction and execute it. Your CPU fetches the next instruction and ADDs or MOVs or whatever and the result is Fortnite - the CPU doesn't know anything about Fortnite, it just fetches instructions and runs them. This is not to say the conciousness is computational in nature (although I strongly suspect that it is), but I don't see how the Chinese Room argument does anything to indicate it is not. > Likewise if we see a computer that is producing “consciousness looking” responses, how do you know if it is the computer that is conscious or just the people who created the content for the training data? Since the computer is modeling them. If the program is generating "conciousness looking" responses from a training set, then it probably isn't concious. If the program is generating "conciousness looking" responses by reasoning about it's past experience, then it probably is concious. All the "AI" that's popular in the news today is the former - it's really just applied statistics. The fact that all the current AI is the former doesn't preclude the existance of the later.
- celeritascelery 4y ago
  We are actually in more agreement then you realize. But I think you misunderstand the Chinese room argument. It does not say anything about if computers are or could be conscious. All it says is that you cannot determine that from a “black box” view. We can’t determine if the computer is really conscious, or just really good at mimicking the consciousness of someone else (ie the people providing the training data). Just like you can’t determine if the man in the room really knows Chinese or if he is just good at mimicking a machine that does. The man really could know Chinese, and a computer really could be conscious, but you can’t determine this as an outside observer.

jwalton 4y ago

> How do they tell if the man knows Chinese or not? Or if he is just emulating a machine that does? But this is exactly the wrong question; assume for a moment a computer program can be concious. Does the man know Chinese, or is he emulating a concious computer program that knows Chinese? Either way there would be a conciousness involved, so nothing about this situation disproves that a program can be concious - there's no contradiction here, and thus logically speaking, no proof. The claim seems to be that because the man doesn't suddenly understand Chinese, the program can't be concious, but this is confusing the program and the computer. If conciousness is computational in nature, then "I" am a program running on a meat-based computer. But it's not the meat (the computer) that's concious, it's me (the program). If the man doesn't understand Chinese, that's fine - he's just the computer the program is running on. It's the program that will be concious. The man just has to fetch the next instruction and execute it. Your CPU fetches the next instruction and ADDs or MOVs or whatever and the result is Fortnite - the CPU doesn't know anything about Fortnite, it just fetches instructions and runs them. This is not to say the conciousness is computational in nature (although I strongly suspect that it is), but I don't see how the Chinese Room argument does anything to indicate it is not. > Likewise if we see a computer that is producing “consciousness looking” responses, how do you know if it is the computer that is conscious or just the people who created the content for the training data? Since the computer is modeling them. If the program is generating "conciousness looking" responses from a training set, then it probably isn't concious. If the program is generating "conciousness looking" responses by reasoning about it's past experience, then it probably is concious. All the "AI" that's popular in the news today is the former - it's really just applied statistics. The fact that all the current AI is the former doesn't preclude the existance of the later.

celeritascelery 4y ago
We are actually in more agreement then you realize. But I think you misunderstand the Chinese room argument. It does not say anything about if computers are or could be conscious. All it says is that you cannot determine that from a “black box” view. We can’t determine if the computer is really conscious, or just really good at mimicking the consciousness of someone else (ie the people providing the training data). Just like you can’t determine if the man in the room really knows Chinese or if he is just good at mimicking a machine that does. The man really could know Chinese, and a computer really could be conscious, but you can’t determine this as an outside observer.