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by _zywo
1465 days ago
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I like Scott Aaronson's response[1] to the argument: > So, class, how might a strong AI proponent respond to this argument? Duh: you might not understand Chinese, but the rule book does! Or if you like, understanding Chinese is an emergent property of the system consisting of you and the rule book, in the same sense that understanding English is an emergent property of the neurons in your brain. Like many other thought experiments, the Chinese Room gets its mileage from a deceptive choice of imagery -- and more to the point, from ignoring computational complexity. We're invited to imagine someone pushing around slips of paper with zero understanding or insight -- much like the doofus freshmen who write (a+b)^2=a^2+b^2 on their math tests. But how many slips of paper are we talking about? How big would the rule book have to be, and how quickly would you have to consult it, to carry out an intelligent Chinese conversation in anything resembling real time? If each page of the rule book corresponded to one neuron of (say) Debbie's brain, then probably we'd be talking about a "rule book" at least the size of the Earth, its pages searchable by a swarm of robots traveling at close to the speed of light. When you put it that way, maybe it's not so hard to imagine that this enormous Chinese-speaking entity -- this dian nao -- that we've brought into being might have something we'd be prepared to call understanding or insight. [1]: https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec4.html |
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