> He said understanding is what humans do, not that only humans can do it. Stop arguing against a strawman. Ok, so his argument is: > Humans understand, model

> He said understanding is what humans do, not that only humans can do it. Stop arguing against a strawman. Ok, so his argument is: > Humans understand, models are deterministic functions > Until you have a concrete definition of what understanding is you can't apply it to anything else > Informal definitions of understanding by those who experience it aren't very useful at all. Basically he says: "I don't accept you using the term 'understanding' until you provide a formal definition of it, which none of us has. I don't need such definition when I talk about people, because... I assume that they understand". Which means: given two agents, I decide that I can apply the word "understanding" only to the human one, for no other reason that it is human, and simply refuse to apply it to non-humans, just because. Clearly there is absolutely nothing that can convince this person that an AI understands- precisely because it's a machine. Put in front of a computer terminal with a real person on the other side- but being told it's a machine- he would refuse to call "understanding" whatever the human on the other side does. Which makes the entire discussion rather pointless, don't you think?