Wizard22 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 8:21 am
Trajk Logik wrote: ↑Wed Apr 03, 2024 2:25 pmYes.
This makes me think about Searle's Chinese Room.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
The man in the room understands something. It understands the instructions to write this scribble when he sees that scribble. He also understands the language the instructions are written in. So it is incorrect to say that a computer does not understand anything. If not, what does it mean to understand?
The rules of symbol-use (language-use) are arbitrary. We can make up and agree on different rules to use different, or even the same, symbols to communicate with each other. This is all the Chinese Room is. The people on the outside of the room learned to use the symbols one way, and the man in the room learned to use the symbols another way. They are just different rules for using the same symbols, so you can emulate the rules in one language using different rules. Just because a computer may have different rules does not mean that it is incapable of understanding. As commonsense alluded to, even humans don't understand the rules of every language, but that does not mean that humans are incapable of understanding anything.
I interpret different languages as different colors of sunglasses: red, blue, purple, orange, yellow, green, etc. The specific language used, doesn't entirely change the transfer of information between Object ("real world") and Subject (Perception/Cognition/Integration/Memory), but it does limit visual stimulus by color or by shade. That's what language does. And so too will AI limit or de-limit its "own" cognition through its code-language. Human programmers have a large degree of control over this.
But so too do humans, have the ability to learn two, three, four, or many languages...or to create entirely new languages.
AI itself is built upon a 'new language' (computer coding through software).
I disagree with this analogy. My native language does not limit what I see or how I see it, only how I communicate it. A Spanish speaker does not see a different animal, gato, when I see a cat. We are only using different symbols to refer to the same thing.
If we are stuck in a particular reality based on our native language then how is it that we can learn other languages? How is it that we can translate languages? If I am wearing red glasses and you are wearing yellow, then how can we understand each other when using terms referring to different colors? Azul is blue, amarillo is yellow, etc. If I said yellow, you wouldn't know what that means, or it would be translatable to something other word, because to you, everything is yellow. To you yellow would be a synonym for "everything". To me it would be a certain color.
We are all born into the same world and we all learn a certain language the same way - by watching others use it and formally learning it in school. We all must be able to see the scribbles or hear the sounds and interpret how they are being used and then practice it ourselves. We all have the same five senses to view the world. Learning a different language does not change that.
In other instances where some slang phrase is used in one language that sounds weird or funny in another is just because you're translating the words as commonly used, not the actual meaning of the slang phrase. Words can be re-purposed in any language that differs from the common use, which shows just how arbitrary language use is. In the 70's one phrase that was commonly used is, "You dig it?". It did not literally mean to dig a hole. It meant "do you understand me?" and that is what should be translated to another language, not literally digging a hole. Words are just scribbles and sounds. It is what they refer to that is important and what is informative, which is why phrases like, "this sentence is false", is an improper use of language (not some paradox) because it doesn't refer to anything informative or useful.
