The Chinese Room was certainly an interesting theory to read about and brings to mind a lot of thoughts about robots, the future of artificial intelligence, and what has already been theorized by scientists, lay-people, and the culture itself. As I was reading, I was intrigued, not solely by the topic discussed, but the motivation behind Searle's conclusions. Do we as humans fear our own capability to create something as smart or smarter than ourselves? Do we not find pride and worth in having children—those we desire to be actually be smarter than ourselves? Perhaps its because we inherently know that our children are created by God and these robots by ourselves? We are scared of creating something so knowledgable because of our imperfections and mistakes.
Then there are the rebuttals and arguments against the theory. These are attempts to refute Searle's conclusions, many of which I agree with and many which are hard to understand. Perhaps many of the arguments are posed by those who desire a strong AI. I hope for a stronger AI, but I highly doubt any level of "understanding" will be reached in the future.
This brings me to my largest complaint about the paper. Many of his key words that Searle uses throughout his paper are left vague or completely undefined. What is understanding? What is a mind? These are questions that he leaves unanswered, and they are unfortunately key to making his point.
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