Searle Can Machine Think Summary

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Searle would not think the robot “gets” the joke. Robots are machines incapable of the understanding semantics of the joke. Searle believes that robots (computers) are only able to process the syntactical meaning. In his essay, Searle asks the question, can machines think? His conclusion is that they cannot because they are dependant on humans to program them; all of their intelligence is programmed. Without being programmed it cannot function and is reduced to pieces metal. Once they are formed and programmed they may understand us, however, it is only at a syntactic level; this is where their understanding of language is limited. This is where the distinction between humans and robots occur. It cannot comprehend the semantics of the words, phrases, sentences it produces. It becomes nothing more than a machine doing what it was created to do.
A robot does not have a mind of its own because it is reliant on a human to give it purpose. It has no other function except for it is programmed to do. It is created without semantics and therefore cannot form it on its own. This is …show more content…

It may not even know what the meaning of a joke actually is. It may not even recognize what humor is in order to understand that the shopper made a joke. It may recognize the word and know its definition, but that is as far its understanding allows. It can only know it in a technical form. It does not have the capacity to go beyond what it is built to do. Although many believe that there is a possibility that one-day robots will be able to do more than imitate the human mind, it is not soon. Without cognitive function, robots will not be able to understand human on a deeper level. Searle claims that an AI brain is programmed to duplicate the human brain, however, it is still unable to recognize semantics. A joke such as this relies on semantics for someone to fully understand its

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