John Searle, one of the 20th century’s most important philosophers, died aged 93.
US-born Searle was known for the “Chinese room” thought experiment, which argued that AI could never be conscious. He imagined a non-Chinese speaker in a closed room, with a book of instructions for how to respond to Chinese text. When Chinese messages are passed in, the person could respond appropriately but without understanding; Searle argued that when computers execute programs, they are similarly applying syntactic rules without true understanding.
Critics responded that while neither the person nor the book understood Chinese, the room itself might: A system can have properties that its constituent parts lack. UC Berkeley removed Searle’s emeritus status in 2019 over sexual harassment allegations.