How are the Turing Test and the Chinese Room problem used to examine the proposition that computers can think?
The cognitive psychologists compared the computer machinery the human brain functioning. This resulted in questioning, whether the computers are really able to think, or whether their intelligence is similar to the human’s intelligence. In the 17th century, automata were developed that simulated human speech and movements.
The author of the book “Giant Brain”, in the year 1949, declared that the machines have the capability to think; since, they could conclude, calculate and choose and was able to perform the operations, based on reasoning. Later, the computer genius, Turing, developed a test known as Turing test to analyze whether the computers have the capability of thinking.
In this test, it was tested whether the computers are communicating with the person or with other machines. In this test, two separate conversations were performed by the investigator with the computer, which was interactive. The interrogator’s aim was to find out which of the two is the computer and which one was the real person. Any question could be asked by the investigator, to the computer and very time, the computer would try to fool him.
Only when the computer fails to fool the investigator, it can pass the Turing test. John Serale produced one of the effective situations of the Chinese room problem. In this situation, the person was provided with the slip containing Chinese texts, from one slot. The person was required to match those symbols or characters with the book.
When the matching sample was found, the subject was required to create the characters from the book on another slip and pass it through the right slot. In short, the left slot was acting as an input and the right slot as an output. If on the other side, a Chinese psychologist was sitting, he could not tell that the subject did not know the Chinese language.
No matter how many slips the subject receive, he still does not know the language, only he was copying the texts from the book and providing the correct answers. The same thing happens with the computers. In such situations, the computers as well as the subjects follow the strict instructions and do not seem to apply their own intelligence.