“The question is not whether machines can think, but whether men can.” — Joseph Weizenbaum (creator of ELIZA, first chatbot)

Imagine you’re in a locked room. You don’t speak a word of Chinese, but you have an enormous instruction manual written in English. Through a slot in the door, native Chinese speakers pass you questions written in Chinese characters. You consult your manual, it tells you: “When you see these symbols, write down those symbols in response.” You follow the rules perfectly, sliding beautifully composed Chinese answers back through the slot. To everyone outside, you appear fluent. But here’s the thing: you don’t understand a single word.

This is the Chinese Room, philosopher John Searle’s 1980 thought experiment that has ‘haunted’ artificial intelligence ever since. Today’s models produce increasingly sophisticated text, writing poetry, debugging code and also teach complex concepts. The uncomfortable question, then, is whether any of this counts as understanding; or are we just being impressed by extremely elaborate rule-following. — Read More