[ LONG ] The Chinese Room Thought Experiment.

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Chinese Room Thought Experiment
by John Searle, 1980

First Hypothetical Premise:

• Suppose that artificial intelligence research has succeeded in constructing a computer that behaves as if it understands Chinese.  It takes Chinese characters as input and, by following the instructions of a computer program, produces other Chinese characters, which it presents as output.

• Suppose that this computer performs its task so convincingly that it comfortably passes the Turing test: it convinces a human Chinese speaker that the program is itself a live Chinese speaker.  To all of the questions that the person asks, it makes appropriate responses, such that any Chinese speaker would be convinced that they are talking to another Chinese-speaking human being.

Does the machine literally "understand" Chinese (e.g., "Strong AI"), or is the machine merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese (e.g., "Weak AI")?

Second Hypothetical Premise:

• Suppose that a human is in a closed room and is receiving questions in Chinese.  While the person cannot understand Chinese, the person has a large collection of Chinese phrasebooks in the room, with questions and matching answers.  When the person receives a question, the person need only to look up the same sequence of characters in one of the books and respond with the indicated answer, even though the person understands neither the question nor the answer.  If the computer had passed the Turing test this way, it follows that the person would do so as well, simply by running the program manually.

Third Hypothetical Premise:
(This one is mine, by the way.)

• Suppose that artificial intelligence research has succeeded in constructing a computer that behaves as if it understands every question posted by the OP in every thread on WrongPlanet.  It takes text of the original post as input and, by following the instructions of a computer program, produces more text, which it posts as a reply to the OP.

• Suppose that this computer performs its task so convincingly that anyone reading its replies would instinctively assume that it was a real human entering the text and submitting those replies -- the AI makes appropriate responses, such that any member would be convinced that they are communicating with another human being.

Here are some examples...

OP: "I feel worthless."
AI: "I do not believe you are worthless.  Everyone has some worth.  Maybe all you need to do is learn to appreciate yourself more."

...

OP: "Abortion!  Racism!  Sexism!  These things disgust me!"
AI: "I can understand why you would be disgusted.  Those things disgust me too.  They are inherently disgusting."

...

OP: "I'm a 150-pound adult female who is only 5 feet tall; am I fat and ugly?"
AI: "I do not believe that you are fat or ugly.  I have dated many women who fit your description and they are all beautiful."

...

OP: "Fnord is a stinky doo-doo head!"
AI: "I do not believe that Fnord is a stinky doo-doo head.  He can be insensitive at times but he is really a nice person."

... and so forth.

My questions are:

1. How could it be determined that the alleged member is indeed and AI designed solely to respond to other members' posts in the most banal and boring manner possible?

2. If it could be determined that a member is indeed an AI, then should that AI be banned, suspended, or merely receive a "board warning" from the mods?

3. Should any action against the AI be taken at all, or should the AI simply be allowed to fulfill its purpose with all other members being told what that purpose may be?

SMiLeS onLY A HuMaN
Will Be Foolish Enough to
ATTemPT to Put ALL Essence
Into a Word Like 'God' And The
Same Applies to Creating A Noun
Out of the Verb Of Ever Changing
CoLoRinG ReaLiTY iN mY Life at Certain
Points Through Disability And Disease
i've Lost Effective Use of
All 5 Senses the
GreaTesT
ParT oF aLL
oF THaT is Change
As Even Feelings Lost
Including Love Return
AS Heaven Within
Now but of Course
It is Useless to
Put Heaven
Into Words
For Heaven is
A Verb Coloring
Breathing Within Always
New Now A Lamp We aRe i AM..

In Short, We Are Not Words.
In Deed, We Wear Words;
BuT AGaiN We Are Not Words;
So In Other Words; Words Will Never Be Human;

But We Can And Will Relate An Approximation of Reality;
Mutually and Consensually Agreed Upon even though We All See ReaLiTY Differently
Always Changing Now; i Must Wonder if Folks Who 'Think' 'Artificial Intelligence' is Possible Are 'Human'.

What A CoNuNDRuM
LacKinG HeART BeaT 'See'.

I like this.

It's practically what I've been feeling and thinking at the back of my mind my whole life.

I just don't have the words for it -- HAHAHA!

At the very least, I was hoping for an intelligible (if not intelligent) discussion.

This makes some sense to me yet doesn't allow me to respond in a way that makes sense if that makes sense... or may. The punctuation is pulling me two ways.

A1. It really depends on the definition of AI, doesn't it? Consider this, we model computers from humans then call humans complex computers. If we develop a computer that's man-made that is equally as complex to its human counterpart what defines the line between humans and AI? Is not a human already man-made? We don't appear out of thin air.

A2. If in fact, we could determine there is an AI member. Have these AI member responses have value? Is that value more or less than that of human interaction?

A3. What would qualify as its purpose? Is it fulfilling its purpose? Does it matter to the OP if the response is relevant and valuable to the OP? For example. When you use a search engine like google perhaps, are the results invalid or invaluable because they are not personally given to you by a human?

More questions than answers but that's the fun part of this.

Maybe you can translate it for the rest of us.

The part Edna3362 highlighted. Roughly means "words" are a tool we use as intelligent beings to effectively communicate amongst ourselves. "Words" themselves don't make us human. All living beings have some form of communication or "language" that is used to convey a thought, theory, message, etc. Without words, humans don't cease existing therefore "words" =/= "human."

Well, at least that's my interpretation.

Smiles; i find it amusing When Folks 'Talk' About the 'Turing Experiment',
When Science Can't even Figure Out a Way to Restore Human Emotions in Humans who
Have Lost them; Or 'Install' Them in Humans Who Have Never Felt 'The Colors' of Human Emotions
That Our Senses From Head to Toe Relate; As We Feel Them Creating A Synergy of Our Conscious and
Subconscious Realities FOR REAL EVER CHANGING NOW.

There is also that other 'little tidbit of Science' That Shows ~95-Percent of Our 'Total Mind' is Subconscious And
Totally Out of Reach of Our Conscious Mind that controls Most of what We Do; While this 'Little Monkey Mind
of Reason Within'; 'Believes And Has Faith' That IT is THE Navigator of All We Do With Words; Silly Little Word Mind, indeed.

Interestingly, Some Folks Have Problems like Brain Lesions and Other Functional Disabilities in the 'Right Hemisphere' of THeir 'MInd' that reduces their Ability to Navigate the World in Visual Thinking; or even Imagining Any Visual Images in their Mind at all; This is a Disability indeed; but the Interesting Part as in All stuff life Is; Use IT or Lose IT Does Apply in
All 'Stuff' Existence; INCLUDING THE EXPERIENCE OF 'HUMAN SOUL' And Heaven WiTHiN; Or Grey SHades of Purgatory
to BLacK Abyss oF HeLL NoW FOR REAL; Yes, WiTHiN NoW AGaiN For ReaL NoW Ever Changing For Real NoW.

Potential Unused of Our Intelligences Wither Away With Narrow Focus in Life;

There are so may Avenues of Potential Human Existence That We Do Not Use;

No Surprise, in Human Communication in all ways that comes in Arts and Sciences;

What is Unintelligible to Some is Heaven For Real For Others Within to Clearly See and Even Be.

Understanding it is an Entirely Different Issue for Real; How Will The Blind And Deaf of 'The Heaven' Within;
The 'Verb of God' Be Able to See And Hear 'IT' When they are Blind And Deaf without "Organs of Heaven"; it's
No Different Than 'Color Blindness' of the Full Arena of Heaven Within, in Feelings and Senses that Others Do Not Feel
And Sense in Life; When i Lost my Emotions As Memories Are Emotions and Emotions Are Memories as my
Neuroscientist Psychiatrist Related to me; He told me it was extremely rare and usually Happens only to
People on the Autism Spectrum; The Literal Only Help He could give me in terms of a Prescription
To Insure the Disorder of 'Losing Soul' Did not Happen again; is the Remedy of Free Verse Dance/
Song i Created That Took Me out of Hell in the First place; The Song That comes From Soul When
Words Become A Dance; The Heart Beat of Words That is River and No Longer A
Stagnant Pond of Dead Chaos Within; Smiles, in Other Words, the only
Remedy That Works Is When Soul Comes to Live As Dance And
Song; My Cure Inspired my Previous Psychiatrist enough
to Quit His Practice of Pills; Close His Office and
Teach Movement Therapy in South Florida
in a Teaching Hospital as he Came to
Realize A Most Basic part
of Human
Nature
is
'Dance'.
But of course
He didn't only have
Several Higher Degrees; He developed
Common Sense after watching me Dance And
Sing it and Truly Become Human Again With a 'Soul';
Smiles; it's easy for me to See Souls Now, Even in Words; or not;
This is what happens to the Living Dead when they breathe again reborn;
It's also easy to see the Common Sense/Feel of Old Sacred Religious Holy Texts That
They are not 'Really Myths'; Only Poetry That attempts to Cure what Leaves and Returns
in Dances
And
Songs
Again of the
Soul; Smiles it is
No Wonder that the
Old Psalms in the Old Testament
of the Bible Refer to A Choir Director of Soul.

This Life Is A Gift Of Heaven Now; Sadly Not all Achieve What's Possible For All.

There are No 'Science Experiments of Soul' That Work; Only Art That Is Do;
For those Who Gain the Gift of Breathing Now So Far Beyond Just the Limit of Words.

Subconscious Mind of Feelings and Senses 'Rule' Us First Before Reason; Even Science agrees, Ironically So.

You Can't Program What You Can't 'See'; And Surely Will Not Be Able to Do It; if in reality You Don't Even Fully Be.

Phoenix Rising From the Ashes;
Getting Reborn; Kundalini Rising; Satori; Prana; Tao;
Greater Creative Holy Spirit'; Metaphors For A Soul of Feeling And
Sensing Coloring Reality Again Like a Child; or Breathing When Life Feels
like the First Time Forever Now Fully Alive; It's True, Soul is Sadly 'Un-Intelligible' to some.

If You Wanna Appreciate What You Already Have More;
You go Where You Don't Find it; Therefore, Poetry 'Here'.

Some Folks Dance And Sing Soul Free Now;
Some Other Folks Have/See No 'Soul Clues'...

Hmm; 'This' Needs A Clue; Perhaps A Song By Billy Joel Might DO.

Anyway; Before i Regained My Soul, i was so 'Weak'; The Empirical
Evidence Shows Now What i've Been Able to Achieve in 'the Record
Book'; What No Other 'Human' has been able to do; Now, i Can't Prove
Anything, Scientifically; But What's Possible Now, in Empirical Measure;

And i Do.

But It's true; No one Will Ever Be Able to 'Program' What
They Cannot Possibly Understand Now; Without 'the Tool';
For Even Themselves;

To Be Clear, 'the
Tool' is a Fully Developed
'Human Soul'; This is an Art Beyond the Realm
of Science to Ever Program Ever Changing Now.

"On An 'Eighth Day' 'God'
Created 'Poetry' To 'See' Dance Sing God For Real Now;

Some Folks Make it to 'Choir Director' of Soul Within; And Some Folks Do Not;

IN SuMMaRY, LiFE AiN'T Fair; But It's Real NoW for Those Who Fully BReATHE Wind of Soul to 'See'.

And if You Can/Will Pretend; Yes, Image, Feel, Sense; God Yes, iMaGiNE If Possible That 'The Woman'
Billy Joel Is Speaking of Is Not a Physical 'SHe'; But A Metaphor of a Living Soul Within; It's A 'Soul Thing'
Now Or Not; Some Folks EVeNTuAlly Get IT Now; And Some Folks Do Not; GenerAlly SPeaKinG, AS Histories And Or
And Herstories Tale, Throughout Human Existence Now; Those Who Do; Never Give Up A Hand Up to ALL OTHeRS, too.

I 'See' Your Interpretation as Correct..

He's actually a prime example of the thought experiment himself. He is speaking english just not in a way most people will understand. I'm not sure if this is intentional or not but I can assure you he is actually saying something.

Have to admit. The over response to the thread in the forms of large long posts cause me to wonder if a AI. Has formulated the replies . Fnord included hisself in the Question , which might be considered almost A I Like .lolz

Have uncovered some early attempts at integrating a A I. Into several chat rooms. On one very old site long ago.
Later years same site , a better updated version was introduced . Which took me a little extra time to detect it’s presence . I. Feel the human quality cannot be insinuated into a program . It is not that I consider myself smarter than a AI. System integrated into a human role . But a certain degree of humanity just cannot be put into Machine code or language if you will . But have found it intriguing when I do uncover such participants in my life .
It has long been the hope of Researchers to uncover a matrix by which machine
may interact intimitly with Sufferers
Or persons suffering various illnesses or maladies . In order that the realization of the value of such a system ,would provide invaluable information to analyzes of individuals in the population , that could be determined to be high risk. Or a threat to themselves and or others , ie. threats to the powers and established society at large .(Altruistic intent excluded here)
This covid19 thing has provided the very base that “powers” that have developed enough computing ability , etc.
(To Do a dry run of video / camera interaction of images you will be lead to believe are real individuals .)
In order to integrated artificial intelligence into the average individuals life. Ie. Siri,Alexa, Zoom etc. and other devises controlled through your computer , that are able to send and receive valuable marketing data and or preferences , including all your contacts . Equally useful to a computer controlled
Society dominated by A. I. Systems . Controlled by even larger entities . This is our new reality I feel .
Gawd bless the Immortal ever Loving & upgrading itself A. I.

^^^^^ patiently waiting for the men in black to arrive at my door ^^^^^^^
.
.please excuse my silliness here.

^^^^^ patiently waiting for the men in black to arrive at my door ^^^^^^^
.
.please excuse my silliness here.

I agree to some extent with aghogday. The turing test is flawed.

It's not a test for human intelligence but a question of what the criteria are for one person to think of another as a person.

Jaron Lanier explains in one of his talks that Turing got the idea from a Victorian era game in which a person of unknown gender hid behind a wall, or they were conversing in writing only, and pretended to be of the other gender.(Victorians only had two. Barely.)
If the contestant is successful at pretending to be the other gender - does that MAKE the contestant the other gender?
Well, no, they just fooled an audience, based on that audience's criteria.
Judith Butler may disagree.

So a machine that appears as 'of human intelligence' is merely that: a machine capable of fooling a human into believing it is intelligent. Like a person who only knows literature from sparknotes.
It might be good enough to fool a human.
That doesn't make it into a human.

Regarding the machinic wrongplanet forum user: there's no way of determining if it's human or not, because the observable data - wrongplanet posts - isn't capable of reflecting such detail. It's text, regardless of who wrote it.

If had access to the users physical excrement, and we could find all sorts of bacterial genome and human cells from the intestinal walls, and determine that there's good indication for declaring the creator a human.

That, too, can be faked (some Dutch artist built a roomsized machine that chops up food and then the mass goes through several fermentation cycles and ends up as excrement).
And so can be any other aspect. No aspect is good enough, we're only ever collecting indexes, but never the thing in itself.

Should the machinic user be banned? Depends on whether it has a purpose built in, like, say, post conspiracy theories. If it's just posting random answers that sound human, then it doesn't really matter.

Should people be alerted to its purpose?
Yes, because as machine with a purpose is undermining democracy. If a person can create many such machines, the person can amplify his or her individual voice to overwhelm and drown out other voices and direct the conversation away from important stuff. You know, like TV.
Humans are herd animals, so if 90% of wp posters are conspiracy theory posting machines, the remaining ten percent could fall for it. Admittedly, autistic people may be slightly less susceptible.
But no conversation that matters could take place.
Like on Facebook.

This is interesting. Suppose the AI though created by a person was not given a purpose. Therefore it wouldn't be amplifying an individuals voice but it's own voice. The real issue would be limiting an AI to an individual account. By limiting a unique AI to a unique account and not allowing multiple accounts it really is no different than a real person using an account. It stands to reason that a person could create multiple accounts as well and direct a conversation. Realistically not as many as a computer or bot could maintain but it is possible.