39. The Chinese Room

Synopsis - It is discovered that the woman behind a screen at a Chinese clairvoyant's booth is actually not deaf and mute. She in fact is a he, and also does not understand the spoken Chinese messages passed by customers from under the screen. He uses a computer to translate the messages, and write meaningful replies back in Chinese. So the jig is up. But is it wrong for a computer to replace a language-processing mind?

This is a strange one. The novelty behind a clairvoyant's booth in Beijing was that the fortune teller was a deaf and mute girl, Jun. No one was able to see her as messages were written and passed back and forth from under a screen. No customer cared if the output he received came from an unseen source until it was revealed that the mystic was a man, John, who relied on a computer as part of the fortune-telling process. The computer did not make the fortunes merely translated.

So what's the problem? The girl is a man. She/he is not deaf nor mute. She/he does not read Chinese. A computer is used to translate questions and predictions passed under the screen. Does the customer then lose out in the purchase of services? Yes and no. A customer still gets his fortune but not under the same circumstances he thought were in place. If the ultimate outcome is the prediction on a piece of paper was it, yes all is ok. If the delivery was essential to the outcome, then there is a failure in expectations. Sort of like knowing the answer to a complicated math problem without showing the sums. Similarly it could also be like fried chicken being presented beautifully on platter, not knowing the waiter dropped the pieces on the kitchen floor earlier.

Baggini wants the reader to look into the metaphysical aspect of having a brain. Is it purely a machine or need it be attached to an external living entity which understands how a problem is solved to qualify as a mind? It seems so. I know my brain processes the light signals entering my eyes into meaningful information but at the same time the eyes, the optic nerves and neurons simply can't give that meaningful information on their own. The sum is greater than its parts.

Can a computer not replace its functions to some degree? Yes of course but it's a lot more work to develop artificial intelligence. The computer in the story translated the Chinese but was not used to develop the clairvoyant messages. Perhaps the translations themselves weren't exact and John had to apply an unexact science to figure out what the messages were. It is this unscientific, fuzzy logic that makes us human, and our brains very powerful.

When does a computer have a mind? I don't know but it'll be creepy if it thought like us.