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Article 2074 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: The Martian Room
Message-ID: <1991Dec12.195341.16163@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 12 Dec 91 19:53:41 GMT
References: <1991Dec12.195125.14719@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 35


 Here we conduct a two part experiment in the Martian Room.

 Just as the occupants of the Chinese Room did not understand a word of 
Chinese, so also the occupants of the Martian Room do not understand a word of 
Martian.  It does so happen, though, that they are very fluent in Chinese.

 PART I.

 We now give the Martian Room occupants the chinese rule book, and provide 
them with the same input as in the original Chinese Room experiment.  Nobody 
can doubt that they really do understand what they are doing.

 But, as they perform their tasks, a strange thing happens.  We find that they 
are often paraphrasing the answers.  They are following the spirit of the rule 
book, but not the letter of the rule book.

 We now compare with the computer.  Indeed the computer follows the letter of 
the rule book.  Clearly the computer flunks the Turing test.

 PART II.

 We take that broken computer which only uses a rule-based expert system
approach, and dump it in the trash can in Searle's office.  We replace it
with the newest model which is fluent in Chinese.  Lo and behold, we
discover it often paraphrases the answers, and follows the spirit of the
rule book but not the letter.

 Please explain how this test proves the computer is not intelligent!

-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940


