Chinese Room

Comments: 
Alyssa Nabors:
http://csce436-nabors.blogspot.com/2011/01/chinese-room.html
Chris Kam:
http://chriskam436.blogspot.com/2011/01/chinese-room.html


Reference Information:
Title: MINDS, BRAINS, AND PROGRAMS
Author: John R. Searle 

Summary:
The Chinese room is a room in which Chinese characters are slid under the door and a response in Chinese is slid back. The person inside the room would have no knowledge of Chinese and only a set of instructions in English of what to do upon receiving certain characters. Searle's argument is that just as the person inside the Chinese room does not actually know Chinese, a computer is not actually intelligent when it is simply executing instructions. Searle's beliefs are those of Weak AI, believing that computers only simulate intelligence, as apposed to Strong AI, which is the belief that computers are actually intelligent.

Discussion:
I find Searle's analogy to be very clever and interesting. I think that a large problem with the Strong vs Weak AI debate is the attachment of humanity to intelligence. I think that those who hold consciousness closely to intelligence will favor Weak AI. On the other hand, those who don't will favor Strong AI. Although I personally think that self awareness is a requirement for intelligence, I can definitely see the reason behind Strong AI. After all, we believe that humans are intelligent and at adolescence we often learned by seeing an object such as a tree and having our parents say the word tree over and over. Through this process we made the connection between the two and whenever someone brought up a tree we would such our knowledge base for the visual associated with that word and then know exactly what they are talking about. Is this really so different than a machine receiving the word tree for input, searching its database, and then outputting a picture of a tree?