Article: The Chinese Room Experiment

John Searle
Reference Information
Title: Minds, Brains and Programs
Names of authors: John R. Searle
Publication: Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (3): 417-457

Summary

In this experiment, John Searle tried to prove that no matter how intelligent computer systems become, they can never really have a mind. He claims that the idea of mind is different from the brain. Mind is where emotions and intension are generated which can not be recreated by a machine.
In this experiment, John Searle, who is an English speaker is in a closed room. All he has with him is a book with English version of computer program, paper, pencils, erasers and filing cabinets. He receives Chinese character written on a sheet of paper as input and manually follows the computer program to generate a meaningful output. Thus, he works like a computer which follows Von Neumann architecture (input-CPU-memory-output) that's proved to be touring complete.
In this experiment, he does not literally understand Chinese which made him conclude that computers do not really understand and learn, instead they just simulate the process of learning. Thus, the main difference is between simulating a human mind and actually having a mind. Searle concludes that "A machine could be built that acts more intelligent than a person, but does not have a mind orintentionality in the same way that brains do". Thus, computers exhibit weak AI as opposed to strong AI.

Discussion
I completely agree with John Seale's conclusion. It is true that the computers will keep getting smarter. Eventually, they sure will be able to perform most of our everyday work, but they will never surpass human intelligence. Machines can perform actions as they are programmed to do. After all, machine learning or AI is also a program that runs on its CPU. A computer will never be able to recreate human emotions, intension and ability to take initiative in performing tasks. This is because emotions are a result of biological changes like changes in hormonal levels and enzymes in the human body. This can never be recreated using a bunch of hard drives, a CPU and cables.