Título: John Searle
Seção: Artificial intelligence
Background: John Rogers Searle (; born 31 July 1932) is an American philosopher. He is currently Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Language and Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. Widely noted for his contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy, he began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959.

Conteúdo: A consequence of biological naturalism is that if we want to create a conscious being, we will have to duplicate whatever physical processes the brain goes through to cause consciousness. Searle thereby means to contradict what he calls "Strong AI", defined by the assumption that as soon as a certain kind of software is running on a computer, a conscious being is thereby created. In 1980, Searle presented the "Chinese room" argument, which purports to prove the falsity of strong AI. Assume you do not speak Chinese and imagine yourself in a room with two slits, a book, and some scratch paper. Someone slides you some Chinese characters through the first slit, you follow the instructions in the book, transcribing characters as instructed onto the scratch paper, and slide the resulting sheet out the second slit. To people on the outside world, it appears the room speaks Chinese--they slide Chinese statements in one slit and get valid responses in return--yet you do not understand a word of Chinese. This suggests, according to Searle, that no computer can ever understand Chinese or English, because, as the thought experiment suggests, being able to 'translate' Chinese into English does not entail 'understanding' either Chinese or English: all which the person in the thought experiment, and hence a computer, is able to do is to execute certain syntactic manipulations. Stevan Harnad argues that Searle's "Strong AI" is really just another name for functionalism and computationalism, 

user: What was Searles part in Artificial Intelligence

assistant: In 1980, Searle presented the "Chinese room" argument, which purports to prove the falsity of strong AI.

user: how did it prove it

assistant: which the person in the thought experiment, and hence a computer, is able to do is to execute certain syntactic manipulations.

user: what happens after

assistant: you follow the instructions in the book, transcribing characters as instructed onto the scratch paper, and slide the resulting sheet out the second slit.

user: what happens to the outside world

assistant: it appears the room speaks Chinese--they slide Chinese statements in one slit and get valid responses in return--yet you do not understand a word of Chinese.

user: So the AI is like getting information from a book without really knowing it

assistant: all which the person in the thought experiment, and hence a computer, is able to do is to execute certain syntactic manipulations.

user: what does it entail

assistant: all which the person in the thought experiment, and hence a computer, is able to do is to execute certain syntactic manipulations.

user: Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?

assistant: Stevan Harnad argues that Searle's "Strong AI" is really just another name for functionalism and computationalism,