[alephxyz]

Isn't that exactly the Chinese room argument though? The human/computer in the room doesn't need to understand Chinese or English to translate?

[s1artibartfast]

The Chinese room metaphor is an argument about AI, or computation more generally, attempting to distinguish the difference between performance metrics and "understanding".

There is the role of the human within the metaphor, and the argument/position of the metaphor as a whole. I don't think it makes much sense to talk about the "point/argument/position of a single component of the metaphor. At least, that wasn't how it was originally structured.

[pavel_lishin]

The Chinese Room metaphor is also about consciousness, about thought in general.

[fragmede]

The thought experiment doesn't give a limit to the amount of intelligence the Chinese Room can display though, and if the thesis is that you just need a big enough model, then the fact that it doesn't "understand" is not an impediment. It's not a decided matter, in any case, and is still controversial among philosophers of the mind (who are less biased than AI researchers in companies that they have stock options in).

[s1artibartfast]

Maybe Im reiterating the same point as you, but the experiment is an illustration of distinction between understanding and performance. Size of the model or perfect performance does not negate the distinction.

IMO, the line of thinking in the metaphor is contingent on unanswered questions about self-awareness, which seems to be a definitional prerequisite for semantic understanding.

[Terr_]

I kinda interpreted it as: "Here's an example of something which we would not call intelligence if you knew how it worked, therefore our definition of intelligence must somehow involve process or understanding, not just results."