Philosophy of the Mind

Professor John Searle uses the term Ð''strong AI' in his article "Minds, Brains, and Programs". Strong AI literally stands for strong artificial intelligence. Strong AI refers to those computer programs that are intelligent enough to be capable of understanding and reasoning. It encompasses more than simply computing and giving an output for every input. Strong AI means that for every piece of information inputted the system or program interprets the information, understands it, and gives out the most logical and reasonable output. Weak AI, on the other hand, merely simulates understanding; it cannot really understand and can only give calculation-based responses. A weak AI is a program that can only give out information based on data that has previously been programmed in it. According to Searle, a program that has strong AI can actually act like a human mind and is aware and adaptive to the information inputted.

Searle intended for his Chinese Room experiment to serve as an argument against strong artificial intelligence. The experiment is set up so that Chinese characters are inputted into a computer. The computer then uses a set of guidelines that are programmed into it to spit out correlating Chinese characters. It works so well that it convinces a Chinese speaking human that she is talking to a real Chinese speaking person, rather than a computer program. Searle then suggests replacing the computer program with a computer-like system with himself in a small room. He is fed Chinese characters and then looks up the corresponding characters in a Ð''rule book' to find out what to send out as output. Searle's argument is that when he is acting as the computer he is not understanding any word of Chinese or even what message he is relaying. All he is doing is looking up the correct response and projecting it, he has no understanding or knowledge of Chinese. He would not be able to translate what he is outputting in English because he does not know the semantics, or the actual meaning, of the characters he is sending out. Likewise, the computer cannot have an understanding of the information it is processing. The computer doesn't know that it is speaking Chinese and doesn't know the meaning of the words it is spitting out. Searle thus shows that strong AI is not demonstrated in this case because the computer has no understanding of what it is saying and acts simply as a mindless computer that