Artificial intelligence : an essay on computers as language users

Abstract

The author has embarked on an investigation of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitivism. The focus is directed at AI's attempt to implement a program to endow a computer with intelligence. However, this endeavor may have been undermined by John Searle's Chinese room experiment. Searle, in Minds, Brains, and Science, rejects AI's fundamental claim that a properly programmed computer could ever be intelligent. His thesis relies on two main assumptions: (1) The formal structure of a computer is insufficient to produce understanding, and (2) the "hard wiring" of a computer, as opposed to the brain's "wet wiring," is insufficient to cause mind. These assumptions will be put to the test in rebuttals presented by several philosophers and AI researchers. However, each of these criticisms will be laid to rest, or at least questioned, by the author. The point of inquiry is now directed at the type of program needed to endow a computer with linguistic understanding. The quest begins with human language acquisition within a community of languages users and ends with a thought experiment. The experiment illuminates the nature of the program needed to produce linguistic understanding in a computer.