A room full of rulebooks can answer in perfect Chinese without understanding a word of it

Philosopher John Searle imagined a person with no knowledge of Chinese, locked in a room with a rulebook that tells them exactly which Chinese symbols to output for any symbols slipped under the door. The output looks fluent, but Searle argued no real understanding is happening, a challenge to the idea that running the right program is enough for a mind.

— John Searle, Minds, Brains, and Programs — Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1980