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From: fnwlr1@acad3.fai.alaska.edu (RUTHERFORD WALTER L)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Intelligent Chinese Rooms
Message-ID: <1990Nov22.012416.4493@hayes.ims.alaska.edu>
Date: 22 Nov 90 01:24:16 GMT
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  I have been following the Chinese Room arguments for a while now and
it keeps reminding me of another question.  If a man sees a squirrel
on a tree and walks around the tree trying to get behind the squirrel,
but the squirrel (not wanting to be caught) also circles around the
tree keeping the man always in sight (by always being on the same side
of the tree as the man) - Did he actually walk around the squirrel?
Another way to look at it is if you try to walk around me, but I keep
turning in a circle so that I always face you - Have you actually
walked around me? The answer to each questions appears to be "That
all depends on your definition (of 'around' and 'intelligence')."
  The problem with the Chinese Room argument is that NOBODY has defined
intelligence. The Chinese Room is intelligent in the same way that a
student who takes a quiz with all of the answers written on his sleeve.
He may score 100% yet understand nothing. Is that intelligence?
The problem is magnified, because the Chinese Room test is more specific
than a Turing Test. My test for detecting intelligence would force the
'Testee' to prove that it had learned something - a feat that I can't
imagine from a Chinese Room.  For example, if I told the CR "Today I
would like to teach you English", (or any other code that it doesn't
already "know") it is GOING to soon fail my test! Because it doesn't
truly UNDERSTAND Chinese I can't truly teach it anything beyond its
hardwired knowledge.
  IMHO the true test of intelligence is how the 'Testee' deals with
novel situations.  The CR fails my test, because it just has an enormous
crib sheet that it is using to pass a specific predefined test - push
it outside of its artificial boundaries and it will show you how little
it understands (just like the cheating student).

  Because I'm trying to keep this short there is a lot I haven't covered
so please keep the flames low - all of the hand waving in my arguments
I'm sure will fan the flames high enough!  :-)


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      Walter Rutherford
       P.O. Box 83273          \ /    Computers are NOT intelligent;
   Fairbanks, Alaska 99708    - X -
                               / \      they just think they are!
 fnwlr1@acad3.fai.alaska.edu
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