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The Chinese room argument holds that a program cannot give a computer a "mind", "understanding" or "consciousness", regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave. The argument was first presented by philosopher John Searle in 1980.

"Imagine you are in a room. In this room you are passed Chinese sentences through a slot in the wall. Inside the room is an instruction book written in English. This instruction book tells you which Chinese words to pass back through the slot in the wall as a response. By doing so you have a conversation in Chinese. In the Chinese room, because the responses you pass back through the door are the correct responses, the person on the other side of the door is convinced you are a native Chinese speaker." ― T.O.M.

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