| The argument of the Chinese room is the strong claim. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room#Complete_argument the conclusion of the complete argument is: > (C1) Programs are neither constitutive of nor sufficient for minds. > This should follow without controversy from the first three: Programs don't have semantics. Programs have only syntax, and syntax is insufficient for semantics. Every mind has semantics. Therefore no programs are minds. --- I personally don't agree with it and believe that there is a flaw in: > (A2) "Minds have mental contents (semantics)." > Unlike the symbols used by a program, our thoughts have meaning: they represent things and we know what it is they represent. While a person may know what they are thinking, examining the mind from the outside it isn't possible to know what the mind is thinking. I would contend that from the outside of a mind looking at the firings of neurons in a brain it is equally indecipherable to the connections of a neural net. The only claim that "we know what it is they represent" is done from the privileged position of inside the mind. I would argue that intelligence is more related to the Kolmogorov complexity exhibited by something. ( David Dowe: Minimum Message Length, Solomonoff-Kolmogorov complexity, intelligence, deep learning... https://youtu.be/jY_FuQbEtVM?t=886 ) That the model of GPT is much smaller than its input. The Chinese room lookup table is enormously large. If we attempt to relegate GPT as no better than a Chinese room, we can show that the Chinese room look up table is impossible with the amount of data that GPT has access to as part of its model. If we say that its not a lookup table but instead an enormously complex interplay of inputs and variables, then the distinction between the room that GPT exists in and our own mind breaks down trying to distinguish which is which. If we want to switch to consciousness, then possibly the argument can progress from there because GPT doesn't have any state once it is run (ChatGPT maintains state by feeding its output back into itself and then summarizing it when it runs out of space). However, in doing this we've separated consciousness and intelligence which means that the Chinese room shouldn't be applied as an intelligence test but rather a consciousness test. Are GPT 3 and 4 conscious? I'll certainly agree that's a "no". Will some future GPT be conscious and if so, how do we test for it? For that matter, how do we test for consciousness for another entity that we're conversing with (and its not just Homer with a drinking bird tapping 'suggested replies' in Teams ( https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/use-suggested-rep... ))? |