[ExI] Meaningless Symbols

[Damien Broderick]

On 1/9/2010 5:41 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> More to the point, what is the difference between real understanding
> and pseudo-understanding? If I can use a word appropriately in every
> context, then ipso facto I understand that word.

Not relevant. What you can do is exactly beside the point when 
discussing what robot systems can do. A good Google translation now can 
cough up a reliable translation from Hungarian (I know, I used it the 
other day to turn part of one of my human-translated papers back into 
English). It would be perverse to claim that the Google system 
understood the words being translated, even though the complex program 
was able to find appropriate English words and syntax. I understood it, 
the machine didn't.

Damien Broderick