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What is an “actual AI” and how would an AI not fall to the Chinese room problem?

by wyre 4y ago

dragonwriter 4y ago
The Chinese Room is a argument for solipsism disguised as a criticism of AGI. It applies with equal force to apparent natural intelligences outside of the direct perceiver, and amounts to “consciousness is an internal subjective state, so we thus cannot conclude it exists based on externally-observed objective behavior”.
- notahacker 4y ago
  > It applies with equal force to apparent natural intelligences In practice the force isn't equal though. It implies that there may be insufficient evidence to rule out the possibility that my family and the people that originally generated the lexicon on consciousness which I apply to my internal subjective state are all P-zombies, but I don't see anything in it which implied I should conclude these organisms with biochemical processes very similar to mine are equally unlikely to possess internal state similar to mine as a program running on silicon based hardware with a flair for the subset of human behaviour captured by ASCII continuations, and Searle certainly didn't. Beyond arguing that ability to accurately manipulate symbols according to a ruleset was orthogonal to cognisance of what they represented, he argued for human consciousness as an artefact of biochemical properties brains have in common and silicon based machines capable of symbol manipulation lack In a Turing-style Test conducted in Chinese, I would certainly not be able to convince any Chinese speakers that I was a sentient being, whereas ChatGPT might well succeed. If they got to interact with me and the hardware ChatGPT outside the medium of remote ASCII I'm sure they would reverse their verdict on me and probably ChatGPT too. I would argue that - contra Turing - the latter conclusion wasn't less justified than the former, and was more likely correct, and I'm pretty sure Searle would agree.
catach 4y ago
People usually mean something like AGI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc...
bigtex88 4y ago
How are humans any different? Searle did an awful job of explaining why the AI in the room is any different than a human mind. I don't "understand" what any English words mean, but I can use them in the language-game that I play. How is that any different than how the AI operates? The "Chinese room problem" has been thoroughly debunked and as far as I can tell no serious cognitive scientists take it seriously these days.
gowld 4y ago
The Chinese Room is famous because it was the first popular example of a philosopher not understanding what a computer is.

What is an “actual AI” and how would an AI not fall to the Chinese room problem?

by wyre 4y ago

What is an “actual AI” and how would an AI not fall to the Chinese room problem?

The Chinese Room is a argument for solipsism disguised as a criticism of AGI. It applies with equal force to apparent natural intelligences outside of the direct perceiver, and amounts to “consciousness is an internal subjective state, so we thus cannot conclude it exists based on externally-observed objective behavior”.

notahacker 4y ago
> It applies with equal force to apparent natural intelligences In practice the force isn't equal though. It implies that there may be insufficient evidence to rule out the possibility that my family and the people that originally generated the lexicon on consciousness which I apply to my internal subjective state are all P-zombies, but I don't see anything in it which implied I should conclude these organisms with biochemical processes very similar to mine are equally unlikely to possess internal state similar to mine as a program running on silicon based hardware with a flair for the subset of human behaviour captured by ASCII continuations, and Searle certainly didn't. Beyond arguing that ability to accurately manipulate symbols according to a ruleset was orthogonal to cognisance of what they represented, he argued for human consciousness as an artefact of biochemical properties brains have in common and silicon based machines capable of symbol manipulation lack In a Turing-style Test conducted in Chinese, I would certainly not be able to convince any Chinese speakers that I was a sentient being, whereas ChatGPT might well succeed. If they got to interact with me and the hardware ChatGPT outside the medium of remote ASCII I'm sure they would reverse their verdict on me and probably ChatGPT too. I would argue that - contra Turing - the latter conclusion wasn't less justified than the former, and was more likely correct, and I'm pretty sure Searle would agree.

catach 4y ago

People usually mean something like AGI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc...

bigtex88 4y ago

How are humans any different? Searle did an awful job of explaining why the AI in the room is any different than a human mind. I don't "understand" what any English words mean, but I can use them in the language-game that I play. How is that any different than how the AI operates? The "Chinese room problem" has been thoroughly debunked and as far as I can tell no serious cognitive scientists take it seriously these days.

gowld 4y ago

The Chinese Room is famous because it was the first popular example of a philosopher not understanding what a computer is.