For one thing, understanding implies that a word is linked to a mental concept. So if you say “The car is red”, you first need to mentally compare the mental concept of “red” to the car in question.
The Chinese room bypasses all of that, it can say “The car is red” without ever having seen a red object at all.
Do you maintain this line of reasoning if it only says “the car is red” when the car is in fact red. And is capable of changing the answer to correctly mentioned a different color when the item
In question is a different question.
Some ai demos show that programs like gpt-4 are already way passed this when provided with, it can not only accurate describe whats in the image but also the context.
Some examples, mind these where shown in an openAI demo for gpt4, Open ai has not yet made their version of this tech publicly available.
When i see these examples, i am not convinced that the ai truly understands everything it is saying. But it does seem to understand context, One of the theories on how it can do this (they are still a black box) is talked about in some papers that large language models may actually create an internal model of the world similar to humans and use that for logical reasoning and context.
It doesn’t matter if the answer is right. If the AI does not have an abstract understanding of “red” then it is using a different process to get to the answer than humans. And according to Searle, a Turing machine cannot have an abstract understanding of “red”, no matter how complex the question or how complex an internal model is used to determine its answers.
Going back to the Chinese Room, it is possible that the instructions carried out by the human are based on a complex model. In fact, it is possible that the human is literally calculating the output of a trained neural net by summing the weights of nodes, etc. You could even carry out these calculations yourself, if you could memorize the parameters.
Your use of “black box” gets to the heart of it. Memorizing all of the parameters of a trained NN allows you to calculate an answer, but they don’t give you any understanding what the answer means. And if they don’t tell you anything about the meaning, then they don’t tell the CPU doing that calculation anything about meaning either.
I don’t think ai will ever use a process to derive an answer the same way as a human does. Maybe thats part of the goal for the original Turing test but i don’t think the biological human ways is the only way to intelligent understanding “on par” with human intelligence.
Does a blind person have an abstract understanding of “red”?
I can imagine an intelligent alien species, unable to perceive colors like us but yet having an sense to detect to what they call “surface temperature” which allow them to recognize specific wave lengths of the ligt reflecting on surfaces, this is sort of how humans see color but maybe for the alien they hear this as sound.
They then go on and use this sensory input to make music. A song about the specific light wavelength that humans know as a deep bordeaux red color.
Do these biological Intelligent aliens not have an abstract understanding of the color red? I would say they do, its different then how we understand it for sure but both are valid. An even more supreme species might have both those understandings and combine them for an even deeper fuller sensory understanding of “red”.
I see ai similar to this, its a program contained in computer hardware. With no body of its own its depending on us to provide it with input. This is now mostly text so the ai obtains a text based understanding of the world, hence why its so decent at poetry. But when we attach more sensors like a camera then that will change.
I am not sure how to discuss “a human using instructions to calculate perfect answers, but not getting an understanding of what that answers means” wed might have to agree to disagree on that but i feel like thats all my brain has ever done. Were born in a complex place we do not comprehend, are given some instructions mostly by copying what others are doing. Then we find a personal meaning in those things, which as far as i am aware is unique for everyone. (Tbf: i am an autist, the fact that not all humans experience reality the same and that i had to find and learn my own personal understanding of the world has greatly shaped how i think about these systems)
For one thing, understanding implies that a word is linked to a mental concept. So if you say “The car is red”, you first need to mentally compare the mental concept of “red” to the car in question.
The Chinese room bypasses all of that, it can say “The car is red” without ever having seen a red object at all.
Do you maintain this line of reasoning if it only says “the car is red” when the car is in fact red. And is capable of changing the answer to correctly mentioned a different color when the item In question is a different question.
Some ai demos show that programs like gpt-4 are already way passed this when provided with, it can not only accurate describe whats in the image but also the context.
Some examples, mind these where shown in an openAI demo for gpt4, Open ai has not yet made their version of this tech publicly available.
When i see these examples, i am not convinced that the ai truly understands everything it is saying. But it does seem to understand context, One of the theories on how it can do this (they are still a black box) is talked about in some papers that large language models may actually create an internal model of the world similar to humans and use that for logical reasoning and context.
It doesn’t matter if the answer is right. If the AI does not have an abstract understanding of “red” then it is using a different process to get to the answer than humans. And according to Searle, a Turing machine cannot have an abstract understanding of “red”, no matter how complex the question or how complex an internal model is used to determine its answers.
Going back to the Chinese Room, it is possible that the instructions carried out by the human are based on a complex model. In fact, it is possible that the human is literally calculating the output of a trained neural net by summing the weights of nodes, etc. You could even carry out these calculations yourself, if you could memorize the parameters.
Your use of “black box” gets to the heart of it. Memorizing all of the parameters of a trained NN allows you to calculate an answer, but they don’t give you any understanding what the answer means. And if they don’t tell you anything about the meaning, then they don’t tell the CPU doing that calculation anything about meaning either.
I don’t think ai will ever use a process to derive an answer the same way as a human does. Maybe thats part of the goal for the original Turing test but i don’t think the biological human ways is the only way to intelligent understanding “on par” with human intelligence.
Does a blind person have an abstract understanding of “red”?
I can imagine an intelligent alien species, unable to perceive colors like us but yet having an sense to detect to what they call “surface temperature” which allow them to recognize specific wave lengths of the ligt reflecting on surfaces, this is sort of how humans see color but maybe for the alien they hear this as sound. They then go on and use this sensory input to make music. A song about the specific light wavelength that humans know as a deep bordeaux red color.
Do these biological Intelligent aliens not have an abstract understanding of the color red? I would say they do, its different then how we understand it for sure but both are valid. An even more supreme species might have both those understandings and combine them for an even deeper fuller sensory understanding of “red”.
I see ai similar to this, its a program contained in computer hardware. With no body of its own its depending on us to provide it with input. This is now mostly text so the ai obtains a text based understanding of the world, hence why its so decent at poetry. But when we attach more sensors like a camera then that will change.
I am not sure how to discuss “a human using instructions to calculate perfect answers, but not getting an understanding of what that answers means” wed might have to agree to disagree on that but i feel like thats all my brain has ever done. Were born in a complex place we do not comprehend, are given some instructions mostly by copying what others are doing. Then we find a personal meaning in those things, which as far as i am aware is unique for everyone. (Tbf: i am an autist, the fact that not all humans experience reality the same and that i had to find and learn my own personal understanding of the world has greatly shaped how i think about these systems)