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> [...] it's still a Chinese Room.

So are you, and so am I.

That's not to say that ChatGPT is sentient or has a significant amount of personhood, but we shouldn't wholly dismiss its significance in this regard, particularly not using that faulty argument.

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The native Chinese speaker is NOT a Chinese room because nothing in the room speaks like a native speaker. No part or amalgamation of room/dweller/setup has the property the native speaker does. Only the native speaker understands Chinese. It’s interesting for a moment to collapse “understand” to “reproduces”, but to continually assert it comes off as denial. Denial of the subjective (feeling what it’s like) component of understanding something. Nothing in or of the room understands. The person inside will tell you he/she doesn’t. And the paper, pencils, and amalgamation are so physically unlike biological brains it becomes suspect to attribute to them the same qualities brains have.

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