Is artificial intelligence even possible?

Could you explain or provide a link to an explanation of the Chinese room conundrum?

Yes, here's one concise explanation

Thanks. That's rather interesting. I would say that it does disprove the possibility of artificial intelligence.

I would agree with you

How is it possible to disprove a possibility?

That's really interesting, but there's always that one possibility of literally simulating every neuron in the brain.

It isn't. However, I don't think artificial intelligence is a possibility.

100 years ago people probably thought that it was not possible to walk on the Moon.

49 years later the impossible was achieved.

Given the exponential rate of technological advancement since 1969, I would suggest that artificial intelligence is probably inevitable.

01/08/2017. Facebook shuts down robots after they invent their own language.

It would be arrogant to assume that human intelligence is the be all and end all of universal progression.

I couldn't actually say.

One takes things at face value.

So, another debate for the conspiracy theorists then.

Nonetheless I stick by the rest of my previous post.

I think that A.I. is more than likely the evolutionary way forwards, in terms of material development.

Yes. Someone decided it would be a good idea to let two chat bots talk to each other, which in my experience is something that always leads to hilarious outcomes particularly with the more advanced ones.

No way I'm going to research this more

The problem with this "conundrum" is that it completely glosses over what it means to have and use a "complete list of instructions."

I would argue that it is the list of instructions that gives you meaning into what those symbols mean. That is, after all, how we learn language natively. I say it would be impossible to give a computer such an instruction list in a way that isn't equivalent to teaching it said language in the first place.

That's interesting, if I understand correctly you're saying that just by leaning how the Chinese characters go in to each sequence is indistinguishable from learning the actual meaning of the symbols and therefore the language?

Yes.

Ok, since I don't have a clue about this stuff, I'm just going to play skeptic here for a minute and see what happens...

If the rule book never had any explanation of the meaning behind the characters, but was exhaustive enough that it showed you how to sequence them to form any sentence in reply to the input you're given, you would be forming sentences in reply like a pro, but you still would never find out what you're actually saying, or what the input person was saying to you, so you could truck someone into thinking you communicate Chinese fluently, but you really can't.

Since no outside meaning of the symbols is ever introduced, the whole thing is one entire illusion.

Wouldn't that be a huge problem?

Except you can't give a said rule book to someone without them learning the meaning. That's exactly how people learn languages. They are exposed to the "rules" naturally without anyone ever explaining to them the meaning behind the words (indeed, they can't, because they don't yet know a language).

The process of giving someone a book of rules for how to sequence sentences is the process of learning a language.

Ok, I'm imagining an instruction book like the one in this video though

If this is the type of instruction book I have, wouldn't I be learning basically the skeleton of a language? How to form sequences but have no clue what they mean, and never will?

Again I'm just playing skeptic I have no working knowledge of this subject but am trying to learn

At this point I'm just repeating myself. 

That's how you naturally learn a language.

When you were 3, and said, "I is a boy" a parent likely corrected you and said, "No, I *am* a boy" and you dutifully repeated them. They very likely didn't sit you down and explain to you about verb subject agreement and the difference between "is" and "am" and the conjugation of verbs.

They taught you how to "form the sequence" and that was written into your brain.

Repeat that enough times with enough different examples and, poof, you have learned the language.

"At this point I'm just repeating myself"

And you're making good points, I'm just trying to wrap my head around the subject. I appreciate your input......pun intended

The Chinese room disproves consciousness, it does not disprove our ability to create AI that resembles consciousness the way we do

That's interesting, you're saying a machine could only appear to be conscious? Not actually be conscious?

Yes, but that is only because consciousness is an illusion and maybe not even possible. They will have the same level of consciousness as us, which is to say none

Isn't consciousness a word that was coined to describe something in particular?

Even if everything is an illusion, are we not aware of the illusion?

You don't really explain why you draw this conclusion but I assume it is based on the fact that any analogy between the guy in the room and a computer can also be drawn between said guy and a human brain and therefore any conclusion reached in one analogy can be applied to the other and therefore both the brain and computer must have equal levels of consciousness.

I think it is more logical to say that this simply means AI consciousness is possible rather than that biological consciousness is not. Cognito ergo sum is pretty hard to get around.

There was something about this thought experiments conclusion that bothered me but I could not quite put it into words. I think your explanation is pretty close to describing my thoughts despite being unable to myself.

Consciousness has nothing to do with illusion other than it itself is one. It is really hard to pin down. But it would imply a self awareness and an ability at self direction.

Consciousness is just something our brain replicates like the computer does in the experiment.  Out brain is chemical reactions that dictate what we do. We are really just slaves to the brains firings.

Yeah that is probably true. If that is incompatible with the idea that our brains are conscious then my guess would be that we have two different conceptions of what the word means, which is fine by me. Philosophers have wasted enough time talking about what consciousness is over the last several thousand years that expecting everyone to be on the same page on that point by default seems a bit unreasonable.

By the way when I said "you don't really explain why" in the above post I was referring to your claim that the Chinese room experiment disproves consciousness, I was not referring to your claim that consciousness is an illusion.