{"id":206581,"date":"2025-10-17T13:15:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T13:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/206581\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T13:15:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T13:15:11","slug":"letter-john-searle-obituary-eric-jukes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/206581\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter: John Searle obituary | Eric Jukes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">In November 1984 I attended Middlesex University\u2019s AI Weekend, which was dominated by discussion of the Reith lecture by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/oct\/05\/john-searle-obituary\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">John Searle<\/a>, titled Beer Cans and Meat Machines, broadcast that week. In it, Searle questioned whether computers could ever truly think, imagining a machine made of beer cans that, if correctly programmed, might on the theory of \u201cstrong AI\u201d possess a mind.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Though he used this to argue that syntax alone cannot create understanding, his challenge invigorated debate about strong AI. It prompted researchers to explore how meaning, embodiment and learning might emerge from computation itself. Four decades later, with neural networks and large language models achieving feats once thought impossible, his questions remain central \u2013 reminding us that today\u2019s AI stands on deep philosophical foundations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In November 1984 I attended Middlesex University\u2019s AI Weekend, which was dominated by discussion of the Reith lecture&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-206581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}