Proposed by philosopher John Searle in 1980, the argument holds that a computer executing a program cannot have a mind, understanding or consciousness, regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave.1
Thought experiment
- Imagine a person who does not understand Chinese isolated in a room with a book containing detailed instructions for manipulating Chinese.
- When Chinese text is passed into the room, the person follows the book instructions to produce an appropriate response to fluent Chinese speakers outside the room.
- According to Searle, the person is simply following syntactic rules without semantic comprehension.
- When computers execute programs, they are similarly just applying syntactic rules without understanding or thinking.
Strong AI
Searle identifies Strong AI as: the appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have mind.
The definition depends on the distinction between simulating a mind and actually having one. Searle writes that “according to Strong AI, the correct simulation really is a mind. According to Weak AI, the correct simulation is a model of the mind.”.