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The original was posted on /r/singularity by /u/bearbarebere on 2024-10-14 00:08:24+00:00.
I haven't seen this exactly discussed before so I'm curious what y'all think.
For those who don't know about the Chinese Room thought experiment:
Imo the answer to the Chinese room is simple: it doesn’t matter. If the room responds in the exact same way as a speaker would, you should treat it the same way you would any person who does understand what they’re translating. I find all the arguments about whether or not it truly understands to be irrelevant, because for every single intent and purpose, it acts like it does, and as long as it never doesn’t, then it should be treated as such.
This obviously extends to AI seeming to have consciousness - if it answers every question we give it as if it has consciousness, demonstrates that it has memories, doesn't hallucinate any more than we do, etc, and for all other intents and purposes acts as if it has consciousness, there is no reason to not say it is conscious.
As a side note, we have no idea if any of us are just p zombies (Philosophical zombie - Wikipedia) or Chinese rooms or not. So it’s best to just assume it doesn’t matter. Otherwise you get into “well you look human but do you REALLY understand?” And you can’t prove it. I don't believe P zombies are even possible for this reason.