Gödel, the Turing Test and the Chinese Room

Abstract

In the previous chapter, we examined some of the origins, motivations, exemplars, and implications of GOFAI. These shone a mostly positive (although qualified) light on the approach; naturally, we now want to turn to a handful of the prominent criticisms. In any age, as the above passage from Hamlet reminds us, we humans think that certain of our features make us somehow ‘special’. Descartes, as we saw, focussed on language use. Hamlet mentions reason. Whatever it is that one thinks distinguishes us (or makes us the “paragon of the animals”), one could construct an argument against AI if one could show that machines must lack that feature. This chapter focuses on three related discussions — sometimes misunderstood — that adopt just this rhetorical strategy. In fact only two of them (the Gödel argument and Searle’s “Chinese Room”) are explicit criticisms with the conclusion that GOFAI is impossible, but the third (the “Turing Test”) does provide an arena in which a variety of anti-AI arguments (like that of Descartes) often get articulated.

What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!

Shakespeare, Hamlet, (Second Quarto version)