Photograph: iStockCan machines think? When Alan Turing asked in 1950, “Can machines think?“, he was not trying to settle a philosophical argument. In 1980, the philosopher John Searle challenged this approach with the “Chinese Room” thought experiment. Imagine a person who does not understand Chinese locked in a room with a large instruction manual. Like the Chinese Room, they produce convincing outputs without any inner grasp of what those outputs signify.

Source: The Irish Times February 12, 2026 07:31 UTC