The Chinese Room

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Turing test candidates are computer programs which have been designed to emulate human speech patterns and processes. The intention of their programmers is to create a program which is so competent at these tasks that there is a strong possibility that it can fool people into believing that they are communicating with another human being, rather than a computer program simulating human discussion.

Presently few Turing test candidates even come close to achieving this goal, however candidate programs certainly seem to have improved since the release of the first Turing Test candidate (Eliza) , which was created in 1966. It seems that Eliza was able to fool some people into thinking that "she" was human, however I found her to have great difficulty even engaging with a lot of what I said to her when I had to study her as a teenager. A lot of what I said seemed to throw her into epic communication imitation loops, or else she would start to vomit out highly contrived and grammatically defective replies.

Wikipedia : Turing Test
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test


From there, "The Chinese Room" is a psychological concept.
It was originally created to examine, explain and respond to the theory that Turing test candidates are able to understand the communication which they take part in.

Wikipedia : Chinese Room
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

I will use the example given in the rather excellent computer game "Virtue's Last Reward" to explain the Chinese Room theory, because I think that the developers of that game explained the concept very well. My explanation will be slightly different... but the important parts will remain the same.

It goes like this...

There is a room, with a sheet metal door. There are no windows, and the door is firmly locked shut.
There is a small slit at the bottom of the door, which is large enough for a flat sheet of paper to slide through.
In the middle of the room, there is a single chair... and on this chair sits a young woman, who has recently woken up from being unconscious.
She is from the UK, and her only language is english.
She has been put there by an unknown person, and there is no means of escape.
Her present location is unknown.
The only other thing in the room is a small locked dumb waiter, in one corner.

She is keen to be free again, and shortly after regaining consciousness she is given the following explanation via a cieling-mounted tannoy system through spoken english :
"You must answer every question which you receive from people outside of this room. You should use the books behind you to assist you in doing this. Refuse, and you will never be allowed out of this room."

Upon examining the books behind her, she finds that there are numerous shelves.... all stacked full with language books. Every single book is a Chinese phrase book, with not a single english translation from start to finish. There are only pages with line after line of coupled Chinese text sentences, all written in Chinese kanji script. On each page, there is first a Chinese sentence marked with "Question" ... followed by another Chinese sentence marked with "Answer". This same layout goes on for page after page of every book (with each book being different).
Fortunately, the woman has a photographic memory and is able to memorise a great many of these sentences before the first query comes through the door for her to answer.

All of the people outside of the room are Chinese, and they do not understand a single word of english. They do not know who is in the room. All they have been told is that there is somebody in there and they should ask that person questions, and can expect a reply from them to any questions which are asked.

The first questions begin to filter through the slit under the door on pieces of paper... all written in Chinese.

"Are you a man or a woman ?"
"Are you alone in there ?"
"Are you hungry ? Did you have anything to eat today ?"

Looking the answers up in the books (or recalling them from memory) the woman replies (also in Chinese) as follows -

"I am a woman"
"I am alone"
"I am very hungry. I have not eaten for days."

More questions come, also in Chinese...

"Should we send you something to eat ?"
"How long have you been there ?"
"Is there any way to get out ?"

By looking up the answers, the woman once again sends Chinese replies back on sheets of paper -

"Please do !"
"I don't know how long I have been in here."
"There is no way to get out, I am trapped in here."

The dumb waiter clicks open, and the woman finds a pan with a Devil's Foodcake inside.
She removes this, and the lock on the dumb waiter immediately locks shut again.

More questions slide under the door now, the pace becoming a bit quicker... with everything still written in Chinese.

"Do you feel less hungry now that you have eaten ?"
"What colour is your underwear ?"
"What would you do to the person who locked you in there ?"

Once again, she recalls the answer phrases from memory or else looks them up in the books.
Her answers are as follows :
"I feel much less hungry, thankyou for the food. I have a stomache ache now, though."
"My pants are black."
"I would whack them round the head with the pan which that Devil's Foodcake came in."

... the thing about this whole scenario is, to the people outside of the room this woman gives every impression of understanding (and being able to coherently respond to) their questions.... but is that really the case at all ?

Certainly, she is able to convey the impression of understanding.... but she doesn't understand a word of Chinese.
All she is doing is looking up incomprehensible strings of Chinese kanji characters, and replicating the equally incomprehensible strings of kanji characters that are listed below them.
Her answers don't even relate to reality, although they give that impression to the people outside the room.
Her pants are white, and she never even ate the cake because she had no idea what was going on.
She only went over to the dumb waiter because she heard the lock clicking open, but then felt too suspicious of the cake to actually eat any of it.
If the people outside of the room were to ask "Are you Chinese" , the allocated response would read "Of course... that's why I'm writing Chinese".


When you apply this theory to the principal of computer programs emulating human communication, the logical conclusion to be taken from this is that similarly Turing Test candidates are not in any way truly capable of understanding the communication which they take part in.... however much they might give that impression to the human beings who interact with them.

However, I am going to use the Chinese Room theory to explain a psychological concept which is rather different from the one which it was devised to explain.

It seems to me that a great many people experience and approach the world in way which demonstrates a limited degree of world perception, engagement and independent thought. I have often seen journalists talking about doing various things in life "on auto-pilot" , and various kinds of people sometimes talk about how they don't think they would be able to cope if they were unable to "go into auto-pilot mode".
As an extension of this, I have seen some people blatantly interact in discussion in a way which would indicate Turing Test failure were they a computer, rather than a human being.

For just one example, consider the following interchange which I had with a friend -

And there seems to be a lot of that kind of thing around, too.... people who just don't seem to understand what you say, and who give inappropriate pre-coded kinds of replies instead of ones which actually match what you've said, some of whom even pull other people into their bizarre mode of communicational response (as demonstrated above).
I conclude that some people appear to have no better understanding than a Turing Test candidate, regarding many of their communication interactions with other people. Perhaps many of you have noticed this phenomenon yourselves ?

I wouldn't be surprised if the most socially adept NT people do this on a frequent basis, but in such an intelligent/talented manner that you can't tell they're doing it. By "it" I mean picking up keywords and automatically picking the "right" thing to say.

It would surely explain why some people seem to be reading from a script while I have to frequently think carefully about what I want to say. Although that might just be jealousy on my part, haha.

I seem to have thought up of a way to "break" Turing tests though - or maybe just the Chinese room example. Just ask a question you've asked before in a different context/intonation.

In the example you've posted, if the people outside the room had asked again if the woman is hungry - although I guess they would have to use the exact same phrasing - she would reply again that she had not eaten for days, which is a lie as far as the people outside of the room can tell and would arouse suspicion.

Against a text-based AI/person, you could at the start of the conversation ask "Are you feeling OK?" - A person would find that a weird way to ask "How are you?" but answer in the same manner. However, if you asked that again later in the middle of a conversation, the person would be confused and assume you think there's something wrong with what he typed/wrote and answer with something like "why do you ask?". I sincerely doubt any AI programmed up until today knows enough about context sensitive questions, and would probably answer the question both times with an equivalent answer.

我说中国很好，中国是我最喜欢的语言学习. ( Wǒ shuō zhōngguó hěn hǎo, zhōngguó shì wǒ zuì xǐhuan de yǔyán xuéxí.)

I think autistic ppl do that. Learning body language by just repeating it to appear "normal", of course not all autistics do, but some and then you can notice that they need a second longer for their gestures if you watch carefully.

When you do something and you can "feel" it than if you have truely understood it.
There is also a difference between your intellect und your intuition. So most NTs have understood social roules intuitivally, but on an intellectual level they might not seem to be all logical. But autistics try to explain things mostly through intellect and dismiss very often the intuitive level. That's why many autistics make the foolish mistake to think that things that can't be easily explained my the intellectual level would be irrational or even not understood at all. But the intuition uses different paths. Sometimes things just "feel" a certain why and noone can really explain you why, but there is still a very strong feeling, but this is on a intuitive level.
It's like explaining a color blind person the colors. Just because the person can't see them, doesn't make them less real...!