The Chinese room

Devised by the late US philosopher John Searle in 1980, the ‘Chinese room’ thought experiment is one of the best-known challenges to the idea that programmed computers could be conscious. This animation from TED-Ed lays out Searle’s famed argument, which has drawn considerable criticism and become more contentious as AI systems have grown far more sophisticated. While exploring whether the Chinese room still computes in the AI era, the video considers the mounting complexities of ever knowing whether computers could have cognitive states – especially given how little we understand our own.

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