Good evaluation. Searle’s Chinese room argument always seems to hit a nerve with many on HN, with lots of outright diamissal. Whether or not it’s wrong, it’s intent is often just misunderstood. If I remember correctly Searle isn’t arguing against the possibility of a computational machine equal in function to a biological “brain”. So no real need to take it as a slight against ml/ai work. Searle’s intrests are in phil of mind and language, so his interest in questions of mind/consciousness and semantic meaning aren’t going to have too much to bear on applied ML.