How does the Chinese room argument challenge the claim that computation produces understanding?

The Chinese room argument, developed by philosopher John Searle, challenges the core tenet of strong artificial intelligence—the claim that human intelligence is functionally equivalent to a computer program manipulating symbols.

Searle argues that computation is defined by the manipulation of symbols based solely on their formal or syntactic properties. In his thought experiment, a person who does not know Chinese sits in a room and uses a manual to match input Chinese characters with appropriate output responses. While the person can successfully simulate the behavior of a Chinese speaker, they possess no actual semantic understanding of the symbols they are processing.

Because the person produces correct responses without understanding the meaning, Searle concludes that mere symbol manipulation is insufficient for genuine thought. Consequently, he argues that computers merely simulate intelligence rather than exhibiting it, as they lack the capacity to grasp the meanings inherent in human language and cognition.123