Many devices in the smart age are powered by artificial intelligence, and voice recognition technologies like Siri aim to communicate with humans in language. The Turing Test and the Chinese Room Debate discuss the limitations of AI, but advances in AI are revolutionizing many fields. However, the ethical issues and social impacts of artificial intelligence require continued research and discussion.
We are living in the smart era. The smart craze that started with smartphones is also manifested in smart cars, smart TVs, smart cameras, and more. Artificial intelligence is the foundation of all these different types of smart devices. An example of artificial intelligence in smartphones is Siri from the iPhone series. Siri allows users to send texts, make calls, and browse the internet, and it is quite flexible in terms of the voice commands it recognizes, so when searching for weather information, it can recognize not only basic commands such as “Tell me the weather for the next few days,” but also commands such as “Do I need an umbrella today?” as a weather search command. It’s as if the phone understands what an umbrella means. It’s even possible to speculate that with the development of these technologies, we may one day be able to have perfect language communication with humans.
One of the main functions of human intelligence is the use of language. If developments like this one can mimic the use of language, as well as other functions of human intelligence, then it’s only a matter of time before artificial intelligence can do the same. However, being able to create a device that functions as human intelligence is one thing, but being able to create an AI device is another.
One of the most famous attempts to answer the question of whether AI is possible is Turing’s Turing Test. Turing argued that if you can build a device that can talk to humans and speak to them as if they were having a conversation, then you can say that the device understands human language. This is known as the Turing Test. Developing the previous example, we can say that it is possible to build a machine that understands human language by building a device that passes the Turing test, right? However, this is not a simple problem.
The most famous refutation of the Turing Test is Sun Tzu’s Chinese Room Argument. An Englishman who doesn’t know Chinese is placed in an invisible booth and exchanges cards in Chinese with a Chinese person outside the booth through a window. The Englishman doesn’t know any Chinese, but he has instructions written by the Chinese to write a certain Chinese language when a Chinese card with a certain Chinese language is entered. Of course, the Englishman is just looking for the same Chinese that is written in the instructions based on appearance alone. If the instructions were perfect, anyone outside the booth would think there was a Chinese person inside. It’s like Siri evolving and becoming a device that can talk to humans. However, if we ask whether the Englishman in the booth understands Chinese, we have a problem: it is possible to speak Chinese without understanding Chinese. In Siri’s example, Siri doesn’t understand the meaning of an umbrella; she’s pre-programmed to answer about the weather when asked “Do I need an umbrella?
Sul’s argument isn’t that AI can’t exist after all. But the criteria for what constitutes a true human AI is very strict. Siri doesn’t simply know the relationship between an umbrella and the weather. It’s in the code inside the program that runs Siri, which is nothing more than logical operations at the machine level. We don’t know much about the human mind’s ability to recognize the relationship between an umbrella and the weather. However, the way Siri relates to the umbrella and the weather is clearly different from the way the human intellect relates to the umbrella and the weather. In other words, if the device does not reproduce the way the human intellect recognizes language, it cannot be said to have artificial intelligence. Does an AI have to react to objects in the same way as a human brain? In my opinion, no.
First, there is the question of whether there is a common way that human intelligence works. Consider the following questions Is the color red different when I see it and when someone else sees it? This is a very traditional question. The red that other people see may be the yellow that I see. Just as colorblind people don’t know they’re colorblind at first, there’s really no way to know and no point in asking whether someone else’s red might be the yellow you see. The important thing is to notice that the color of fire is the same as the color of a tomato and different from the color of a lemon. This is what color blindness is, the inability to function normally. Only in this case can you say that you see colors that are different from your own. Recognizing colors is also part of intelligence. Recognizing colors is a part of the function of intelligence, but as we can see, we don’t know if intelligence really works the same way even among what we might call the same intelligence.
There is evidence that the same human intelligence works in different ways. Male and female brains work differently. In terms of brain structure, women’s brains have 10% more cerebral cortex. It’s also been shown that when men have a conversation, their brains activate only the left hemisphere, whereas women activate both the left and right hemispheres. What’s important to note here is that despite the differences in how male and female intelligence works, it doesn’t mean that one is less intelligent than the other. If the above example doesn’t make sense because the male and female brains are so similar in their basic makeup, consider a more extreme example.
Suppose we become technologically advanced and make contact with an alien civilization whose home star’s environment is composed of silicon compounds, as opposed to carbon compounds, which is how life on Earth is composed, and therefore how the human brain works. Even if these aliens are sufficiently civilized and have a way to communicate with humans, would we still call them unintelligent?
If we say that a human-made device that functions in a way that closely resembles human intelligence does not have intelligence, can we claim that an alien living on a completely different planet does not have intelligence? Or, closer to home, if the female and male brains are structured differently, can we say that only one has intelligence? In fact, what makes a human-made device different from the previous example is that we know how it works. However, the mystery of how it works should not be a factor in determining whether intelligence exists or not.
The Turing Test is a discussion of the linguistic part of human intelligence only. However, what Turing was trying to say in the Turing Test is that if a human and an AI have the same response to the same input, then the AI has the same intelligence as a human. Although he used the human language ability as an easy example, the same principle can be applied to other parts of human intelligence. For example, if we think about creative behavior, such as writing a poem, we can say that there are certain inputs that cause the poet to think of a poem, and the function of writing a poem is to produce an output for those inputs. It’s just that this function hasn’t been systematically explored yet.
In this article, I would like to argue that when judging whether a human-made device has intelligence or not, whether it works in the same way as human intelligence should not be a factor in the judgment. In other words, if a device functions to produce the same output in response to the same response as a human, it can be said to have the same intelligence as a human. Therefore, at the current rate of development of technology that simulates human intelligence, we are confident that the development of devices with artificial intelligence is not far off.
Research on artificial intelligence is still ongoing. For example, technologies like machine learning and deep learning are getting closer and closer to human intelligence through data analysis and pattern recognition. These technologies are revolutionizing fields as diverse as healthcare, finance, and transportation. In healthcare, AI is performing complex tasks like cancer diagnosis, and in finance, it’s being used to optimize investment strategies. In transportation, self-driving cars are helping to reduce traffic accidents and provide efficient traffic flow.
Advances in AI also raise ethical questions. There are concerns about the potential for AI to replace human jobs. This could increase social inequality and increase the need for new jobs and retraining. There is also the issue of bias and transparency in the way AI makes decisions, which is an important topic of discussion. Therefore, ethical considerations are essential in the development and utilization of AI.
In conclusion, AI is highly anticipated for its potential and possibilities. However, its implementation and utilization comes with many challenges and issues, not only technical but also social and ethical. Continued research and discussion of these issues is necessary if AI is to change human life for the better.
The future of AI depends on human creativity and wisdom. We need to answer the question of how to develop and utilize AI responsibly. AI is not just a technological tool, it can become an important part of our society. We must continue to learn, collaborate, and communicate to ensure that AI develops in the right direction. This is a challenge and an opportunity for all of us.
