Artificial Intelligence; Chinese Room Thought Experiment

[VladTheImpaler]

I'm currently listening to On Intelligence: How a new understanding of the Brain Will lead to truly Intelligent Machines. It is a book, I downloaded the audio book because I’m a slow reader and lazy.

The Thought Experiment:

Suppose you have a room with a slot in one wall. Inside is an English speaking person sitting at a desk. He has a big book of instructions and all the pencils and scratch paper he could ever need. Flipping through the book he sees that the instructions, written in English, dictate ways to manipulate sort and compare Chinese characters. Mind you the instructions say nothing about the meaning of the Chinese characters. They only deal with how the characters are to be copied, erased, reordered, transcribed and so fourth. Someone outside the room slips a piece of paper through the slot. On it is written a story and questions about the story, all in Chinese. The man inside doesn’t speak or read a word of Chinese. But he picks up the paper and goes to work with the rule book. He works by closely following the instructions in the book. At times the instructions tell him to write the characters on scrap paper and on other times tell him to move or erase characters. The man works until the books instruction tells him he is done. When he is finished, at last, he has written a new page of characters, which unbeknownst to him are the answers to the questions. The book tells him to pass the paper back through the slot; he does it wondering what this tedious process has all been about.

A Chinese speaker on the other side of the slot reads it and says all the answers are correct, even insightful. If she was asked if she thought the answers came from an intelligent mind that had understood the story, she would definitely say yes. But can she be right? Who understood the story?

This was used to demonstrate that our computers today cannot be intelligent, no matter how fast it is (the English person applying the rules) or how much memory (scrap paper) it has or how well the software is written (the instruction book). No matter how cleverly our computers are made they have no understanding.

I’ve just barely listened to the first hour of twelve but it seems the book is trying to show that we need to understand how the brain works and to understand what understanding actually is before we can develop truly intelligent machines. Makes sense so far.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Thoughts? Yes. I don't get the experiment.

[VladTheImpaler]

What about it don't you get? Or better yet, what about it do you understand?

Not sure I can help you understand unless I know more. I also wrote this down when listening to the audio book live, it might not be 100% accurate.

[VladTheImpaler]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Room

The Chinese person reading it at the end is simply applying a different set of rules (some of which will likely be at least similar to those the English person uses) that enable them to understand it - or rather, that is the essence of them understanding it. If you see what I mean.

I see no reason why a computer could not someday be made that is capable of following the same rules the Chinese person is using. Which seems to be what you're getting at. Fascinating stuff.

[VladTheImpaler]

Facehammer wrote

The Chinese person reading it at the end is simply applying a different set of rules (some of which will likely be at least similar to those the English person uses) that enable them to understand it - or rather, that is the essence of them understanding it. If you see what I mean.

I understand what you mean, but I'm am undecided on wheter or not that is the essence of understanding.

Facehammer wrote

I see no reason why a computer could not someday be made that is capable of following the same rules the Chinese person is using. Which seems to be what you're getting at. Fascinating stuff.

But what you are referring to is the software (rules), I'm not sure if the only problem we have per today to make an intelligent machine is limited to the software. The book I'm listening too seems to make the argument that the way a computer is made per today doesn't in any way mimic the brain; it is very different and as such it cannot attain understanding. In order to make an intelligent machine we have to understand how exactly our brains work and how we derive our intelligence from that, or something… hehe.

Very interesting, maybe I’ll be wiser on the subject in a few days.

Brain replacement scenario, In this, we are asked to imagine that engineers have invented a tiny computer that simulates the action of an individual neuron. What would happen if we replaced one neuron at a time? Replacing one would clearly do nothing to change conscious awareness. Replacing all of them would create a digital computer that simulates a brain. If Searle is right, then conscious awareness must disappear during the procedure (either gradually or all at once). Searle's critics argue that there would be no point during the procedure when he can claim that conscious awareness ends and mindless simulation begins.

I believe with this scenario, you can have AI.

[Rhinoqulous]

Searle's thought experiment fails to take into account the system as a semantic whole, and thus it fails to disprove AI.

[VladTheImpaler]

Rhinoqulous wrote

Searle's thought experiment fails to take into account the system as a semantic whole, and thus it fails to disprove AI.

I’m intrigued! However I don’t quite understand or grasp what it means to say a semantic whole. Can you explain it to me?

VladTheImpaler wrote

What about it don't you get? Or better yet, what about it do you understand?

Not sure I can help you understand unless I know more. I also wrote this down when listening to the audio book live, it might not be 100% accurate.

I think I just read it sloppily, but I can't bother re-reading it right now

I think artificial intelligence stops being artificial when it becomes conscious, but that's just my point of view. Hope I live long enough to see it. Really, circuits aren't much different than electric brain impulses.

[psychodiva]

Ema wrote

I think artificial intelligence stops being artificial when it becomes conscious, but that's just my point of view. Hope I live long enough to see it. Really, circuits aren't much different than electric brain impulses.

true- in a very simple way tho

http://www.brainchannels.com/evoluti...tricbrain.html

http://www.theallineed.com/health/06031802.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/scanning/eeg.html

sorry- mention the brain and I tend to just sit up and start posting links

[Rhinoqulous]

Ema wrote

I think artificial intelligence stops being artificial when it becomes conscious, but that's just my point of view. Hope I live long enough to see it. Really, circuits aren't much different than electric brain impulses.

"Artificial" in "artificial intelligence" refers to the "consciousness" stemming from a non-biological source, i.e., a computer. The main goal of AI research is semantics, to have a computer capable of conducting spontaneous conversations while having the capability to recognize relevant information. The second goal is sex robots, which I think the Japanese are working on.

[a different tim]

With Rhino in general. We could claim intelligence is an emergent property of the system, not of one of its parts.

I'd also tend to be behaviourist on this: A system is intelligent if it acts intelligently. The Chinese Room was postulated as a counter to Turing's ideas along these lines as expressed here (you'll have to excuse the slightly retina-burning site). I think Turing was smarter than Searle and had already anticipated this kind of counter-argument. See specifically this comment, which seems to me to apply to Penrose's objections to AI as well as the Chinese Room:

Alan fucking Turing, bitches wrote

The short answer to this argument is that although it is established that there are limitations to the powers of any particular machine, it has only been stated, without any sort of proof, that no such limitations apply to the human intellect.

[Rhinoqulous]

What ADT said. "Intelligence/Consciousness" is an emergent property of a system, such as a brain or a computer. The Chinese room experiment fails as it focuses on the individual parts, and not on the system as a whole (as I said above). It's like claiming because your eye doesn't have consciousness you as a whole doesn't.