Turing Test, HSK Test

You know that philosophy puzzle called the Chinese Room about the definition of AI? It basically ask if you don’t speak Chinese, but have sufficient dictionaries and translation resources to fake it to people who don’t see your 老外 face, did you just pass a Chinese Turing test?

Searle (1999) summarized the Chinese Room argument concisely:

Imagine a native English speaker who knows no Chinese locked in a room full of boxes of Chinese symbols (a data base) together with a book of instructions for manipulating the symbols (the program). Imagine that people outside the room send in other Chinese symbols which, unknown to the person in the room, are questions in Chinese (the input). And imagine that by following the instructions in the program the man in the room is able to pass out Chinese symbols which are correct answers to the questions (the output). The program enables the person in the room to pass the Turing Test for understanding Chinese but he does not understand a word of Chinese.

Searle goes on to say, “The point of the argument is this: if the man in the room does not understand Chinese on the basis of implementing the appropriate program for understanding Chinese then neither does any other digital computer solely on that basis because no computer, qua computer, has anything the man does not have.” The Chinese Room Argument (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Anyway, I’m studying for the HSK right now, and I’m pretty sure that I’m the guy carefully producing a reasonable facsimile of Chinese in the Chinese Room.