[circuit10]

To me the Chinese Room thought experiment seems like it's meant to show that AIs can be intelligent, not the opposite?

"Searle could receive Chinese characters through a slot in the door, process them according to the program's instructions, and produce Chinese characters as output, without understanding any of the content of the Chinese writing."

Sure, but that doesn't mean the state of the program doesn't contain any understanding or intelligence, it's just that the human doesn't have a high-level view that can be used to decode that internal state. We're not asking whether the computer chip itself understands things but whether the something contained in the program running on it does. The human could also run a physics simulation as in https://xkcd.com/505/ and recreate a human brain which would be no different to a physical brain in terms of behavior and so there would be no reason not to call it intelligent

[hmcq6]

You're misunderstanding the thought experiment then. By definition the person inside the Chinese Room doesn't understand Chinese.

> but that doesn't mean the state of the program doesn't contain any understanding or intelligence

Programs don't contain understanding or intelligence, they contain instructions.

> We're not asking whether the computer chip itself understands things but whether the something contained in the program running on it does.

I feel like your saying "I'm not accusing the blender of being intelligent, I'm saying the recipe for this margarita is self aware." It doesn't matter if its hardware or software, neither is capable of understanding because understanding is a conscious experience and neither a blender nor a recipe are sentient.

> The human could also run a physics simulation

Cool XKCD but I'm not arguing about wether AI is possible. Just pointing out that convolutional neural networks are not self aware or intelligent or actually learning (at least not yet).

[circuit10]

> “You're misunderstanding the thought experiment then.”

So if I don’t agree with it, I’m misunderstanding it? It even says in the Wikipedia article for it:

> "The overwhelming majority", notes BBS editor Stevan Harnad, "still think that the Chinese Room Argument is dead wrong".

So don’t try to pretend it’s some absolute truth, it’s just a flawed argument

> Programs don't contain understanding or intelligence, they contain instructions.

Why can intelligence and understanding not come from a sufficiently complex set of instructions?

> understanding is a conscious experience and neither a blender nor a recipe are sentient.

That’s an odd definition of understanding. By my definition understanding is having information about something and the ability to process it such that you can effectively predict its behaviour and possibly take actions to change its state to fit a goal. I guess you will always win if you redefine all the words to mean what you want. Your definition is useless because it’s unfalsifiable because you can’t measure whether something is “sentient”

> Just pointing out that convolutional neural networks are not self aware or intelligent or actually learning

Self aware? Probably no

Intelligent? To some extent, yes

Learning? Of course they are, I don’t see how you can argue that they aren’t

[hmcq6]

> So if I don’t agree with it, I’m misunderstanding it?

Now you're misunderstanding me. I'm not saying you're not allowed to have a different opinion on the full thought experiment. You're assuming intelligence in the setup of the thought experiment and that is objectively not how it is meant to be interpreted.

> Why can intelligence and understanding not come from a sufficiently complex set of instructions?

Again I didn't say it can't just that convolutional neural networks as they currently exist are not that complex. It's a fancy Markov chain.

> I guess you will always win if you redefine all the words to mean what you want.

You say directly after making up your own definition of intelligence. I'm not interested in discussing your definition of intelligence or the definition of intelligence, I'm talking about this specific application of technology and if it meets a common definition of intelligence. Please point to a dictionary definition if you wanna continue this back and forth

> Learning? Of course they are, I don’t see how you can argue that they aren’t

Because learning has a definition. Theres a reason AI researchers call it "Training" and not "Teaching"

[circuit10]

> You say directly after making up your own definition of intelligence.

I guess but I think the one I’m using is more common and useful. The Google dictionary says “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills” which is closer to mine (having knowledge and the ability to apply it) than yours (some abstract idea of consciousness that can’t be measured)

> Theres a reason AI researchers call it "Training" and not "Teaching"

They also call it machine learning

[hmcq6]

> the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills

Ok but what is knowledge? You need to follow that rabbit hole. Knowledge isn't just data. You'll find that knowledge is frequently defined with some tie in to experience and the definition of experience is tied to consciousness.

> They also call it machine learning

They have called the field Artificial Intelligence (or ML) since 1956 but that doesn't mean they had an example of an instance of artificial intelligence. It's just the name of the field. I've never heard of a researcher referring to the act of training as "machine learning" though, just the field.