Can Machines Think?

 (Madison Reeves H02)

               Alan Turing is mostly remembered for his role in decoding the German’s “unbreakable” Enigma code in WWII and being the father of computer science and artificial intelligence rather than as a philosopher, but his paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” published in 1950 is one of the most cited works in modern philosophical literature to date. His paper discusses the question of “Can machines think?” and discusses one of his most popular concepts, the Turing test, also known as the Imitation Game. John Searle is a philosopher known for his contributions to the philosophies of language and mind and social philosophy. His most-known argument is the “Chinese room”, which argues against the idea of strong artificial intelligence.

 

Who is Alan Turing?

               Alan Turing was born in London on June 23 of 1912 to upper-middle class British parents. He went to King’s College to study mathematics, with his distinction increasing through the years, leading to him being recognized as a Fellow of the college in 1935. He continued to show his remarkable abilities when he made his debut into the field of mathematical logic with his paper “On Computable Numbers…” This work gave a definition to computation and a limitation on what computation could achieve, leading it to be the groundwork for modern computer science. Following this, he went to the United States and attended Princeton to study logic and other mathematical branches. He returned to Britain in 1938 and was recruited immediately to help the British decode German communications. From 1939 to 1945, Turing’s time was mostly devoted to his work in cryptological investigations at the top-secret wartime communications headquarters in Bletchley Park, and he was the main contributor to the decoding of the allegedly unbreakable German Enigma machine code and decoding U-boat communications. Following the war, he planned to make modern computers, but because his achievements were classified by the British government, he wasn’t recognized as much as the Americans doing the same thing even though his ideas led the field as a whole. He eventually grew frustrated and went back to thinking about the limitations or computation, this time focusing on the comparison of machines and the human brain. He eventually wrote his paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” on this very topic. He began working in the field of biology, but his work was abruptly interrupted when he was arrested for having a sexual affair with a man in 1952 because being gay was very illegal in Britain at the time. He was found guilty and sentenced to chemical castration, which is when drugs are injected into someone through a painful procedure that can cause depression, cardiovascular disease, and impaired metabolism. Following this sentencing, he was disqualified from continuing his cryptological work by the British government. Two years later in 1954, he died from apparent suicide by eating an apple laced in cyanide.

        Alan Turing's life has been the inspiration behind a few different movies over the years. One that I've personally seen is The Imitation Game, and I personally enjoyed it even though it isn't the most historically accurate. I recommend it to anyone that's interested in Alan Turing's life.

 

Who is John Searle?

               John Searle was born in 1932 in Denver, Colorado. He began his college education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but transferred to the University of Oxford in his junior year, where he received all of his degrees. He published the article containing one of his most famous ideas, the Chinese Room argument, in 1980. Throughout his life, he has received five honorary doctorates from four different countries, and he is an honorary visiting professor at Tsing Hua University and East China Normal University. He also received the Jean Nicod Prize, the National Humanities Medal, and the Mind and Brain Prize. He taught at the University of California Berkeley from 1959 to 2016 and was still allowed to keep the professor title even after he quit teaching as an honor from the university. Despite the prestige that Searle had, this reputation was quickly tarnished after it was revealed that he sexually assaulted his lab assistant and then docked her pay in half after she refused his advances. He was also accused of assault and battery, retaliation, and wrongful termination, and following the beginning of the lawsuit, many previous allegations of sexual harassment and assault were revealed to the public. This led to his title as a professor at Berkeley to be revoked.

 

What is the Turing Test for artificial Intelligence?

               The previously mentioned Turing Test for artificial intelligence, also known as the Imitation Game, was a test designed by Alan Turing to test whether or not computers could show intelligent behavior equivalent to or indistinguishable from that of a human. If a computer passes the test, then it is intelligent in the way that humans can be. The way this test would be conducted is that a person would be in one room having a conversation on a computer. The tester would have no idea if they were having a conversation with a computer or a human, and if during the conversation, the person can’t tell whether or not there is a person or a computer talking to them, then the computer is determined to have the same intelligence of a human. Personally, I don't believe that this is a sufficient measure of the intelligence of computers in regards to if they are capable of the same kind of thinking as humans.

 

What is the Chinese Room Argument?

               The Chinese Room argument is Searle’s argument against the Turing Test, and it is one of the most well-known arguments in recent philosophy. It also refutes the idea that human minds are like computers and other information processing systems. In this argument, Searle imagines that he is in a room following the computer program for responding to Mandarin characters slipped under the door. Searle doesn’t understand Mandarin, but by following the program as the computer does, he is able to send the appropriate characters back under the door to respond to the person outside. This leads the person outside the room to mistakenly believe that the person inside can understand Mandarin fluently. This serves to say that although a computer can produce intelligent-sounding sentences and can mimic humans, they cannot be truly intelligent in the way that a human being is. The computer can write sentences, but it doesn’t actually understand what it’s saying. It just follows its programming to write down coherent thoughts, not understanding the actual meaning of the words. I do feel that this is a pretty sufficient argument against the Turing Test.

 

 Criticisms of Searle’s Argument and Possibilities for the Future

               A criticism of Searle’s experiment is that it looks at the question of whether or not the person in the room knows what’s going on, but this is a mistake. For the purpose of the thought experiment, the person is just part of a system, so it doesn’t matter if they know what’s going on or not. Their job, like a computer, is to look at a set of symbols that are given to them and respond accordingly. In this specific imaginary circumstance, the individual thinking of humans is not super necessary to consider, at least in my opinion. He still changed the thought experiment to imagining that person in a field after having memorized the full rulebook, rather than just shuffling through cards. Some philosophies, however, remain convinced that the human mind is just like a computer and that computers really can think. If these people are right, then it may be possible in the future to transfer people’s minds to computers. Just because your mind is running in your brain right now doesn’t mean that it couldn’t possibly run in a computer one day. It may even be possible to survive death in the future, assuming this theory is true. People could use extremely intelligent computers to map the billions of functional connections that make up your mind to create an artificial you. Your mind could be uploaded to a computer and you could live and your mind could carry on working long after your body was buried or cremated, however, this is not approaching the question of whether or not this would be a good or happy existence. If Searle’s argument is correct though, there is no way to fully guarantee that the uploaded mind that is supposed to be you would actually be conscious in the way that you are now, even if it gave responses that appeared to indicate that it was.

Why Are These Ideas Still Relevant?

            These ideas are prevalent today still in media as well as in general discussion in the wake of AI. A piece of media that discusses the questions of the intelligence and consciousness of machines is the videogame Detroit: Become Human. Throughout the game, you play as three different androids that perform three different services in society: a caretaker for the elderly named Markus, a detective assistant named Connor, and a housekeeper named Kara. As the story develops, these three androids break out of their programming and become "deviants" and develop freewill and emotions and proper intelligence. Kara breaks out of her programming and develops maternal instincts towards the daughter of the abusive man she works for and runs away with her to protect her. Markus breaks from his programming after the son of the elderly man he cares for attacks him, accusing his father of preferring Markus to him. Connor actually doesn't deviate from his coding until later in the story, and there's options for him to not deviate at all. His story is interesting because it directly discusses the Turing Test at one point. While he's investigating various android deviants, he goes to the house of the man that invented androids named Elijah Kamski, and Connor meets Chloe, the first android to pass the Turing Test. These are just parts of the game, but it goes in-depth with these topics and discusses the possibility of AI experiencing emotions, falling in love, experiencing sadness, and feeling anger. This kind of conversation is especially relevant today in the wake of the AI revolution. It's no longer wholly unimaginable for a world to come to be that is similar to that of Detroit: Become Human. That makes it more important for these topics to be discussed in media and just in general contemplation. While I personally don't believe that machines are able to think and feel in the way human beings can and I don't believe there is sufficient evidence to prove that they ever will, it's still important to have these discussions of the possibility of that.