Are Artificial Intelligence (AI) Devices Really Intelligent?

Some people insisted that it is conscious; it has emotions; it has understanding; and it is indeed intelligent; otherwise how can it compose such a nice poem?

The answer to the above raised question can be given by Searle’s arguments: In fact, computers can compose a poem in a mechanical manner without having any understanding of the actual meaning of the poem. This puzzle is captured in a famous paradox called Searle’s Chinese Room Paradox.

Searle imagines (Searle’s argument is generic, here it’s used in this specific context) that the AI computer is asked first of all to compose a poem in Chinese rather than English. He describes a thought experiment in which humans (who do not know Chinese) execute the steps of a computer program that accepts input queries in Chinese and gives out answers of the queries in Chinese. The questions and answers both of these are in Chinese whereas the humans who are simulating the computer themselves don’t understand Chinese.

Searle envisages these humans laboriously moving counters in such a way so as to act out all the detailed steps that the computer would perform. All the operations of computer algorithm for this are supplied (in English) as a set of instructions for manipulating counters with Chinese symbols on them. If these (imagined) humans are asked to compose a poem in Chinese, they follow all the detailed steps that the computer would perform, and thus compose a poem in Chinese. Now it is clear that none of the humans involved in the thought experiment understand a single word of Chinese, so they will not have a faintest idea of what the poem is about, nevertheless, by correctly carrying out the series of operations (which AI computer is supposed to do), they are able to compose a poem in Chinese.