The Turing Test
The Chinese Room
Searle’s Chinese Room
The Systems and Robot Replies
Through the Wormhole, Are Robots the Future of Human Evolution (Season 4, Episode 7)
Reading:JohnSearle“CanComputersThink?”Mind BrainsandScience,pp28-56.
The Turing test is a way to see whether a computer could be considered to be intelligent, or
not. It is utilized by an imitation game where there are two players. One player is human,
and the other player is a computer. The human talks to the interlocutors, which are not
known to the human player. One of the interlocutors is a computer, and the human player
has to talk with each one. The idea is to see if the computer player can trick the human
player, and appear human.
Searle’s thought experiment demonstrated that manipulation of formal syntax is not
identical to intelligence. I honestly do not agree with this conclusion. I feel that
intelligence is not easily defined. To me intelligence is improvement. If a child can figure
out a way to get the cookie from the high counter, that child is showing intelligence. If a
man can look at scrap wood and design a grand table, that man is showing intelligence. If a
woman can translate her language into another unknown language, only using a language
dictionary, she is showing intelligence. With that being said I feel that machine translating
information and performing a task to communicate with a human is nothing more than
intelligence. It is artificial intelligence, but still intelligence nonetheless.
Explain the “robot reply”. Why does Searle concede that robots may one day have the
capacity to understand? Do you think robots could be the future of human evolution?
Defend your answer.