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[With apologies to Putnam, Pope, and all of you]

Two children are reading a text\xa0written by an AI:

The hobbits splashed water in each other\u2019s faces until they were both sopping wet

One child says to the other \u201cWow! After reading some text, the AI understands what water is!\u201d

The second child says \u201cIt doesn\u2019t\xa0really\xa0understand.\u201d

The first child says \u201cSure it does! It understands that water is the sort of substance that splashes. It understands that people who are splashed with water get wet. What else is left to understand?\u201d

The second child says \u201cAll it understands is relationships between words. None of the words connect to reality. It doesn\u2019t have any internal concept of what water looks like or how it feels to be wet. Only that the letters W-A-T-E-R, when appearing near the letters S-P-L-A-S-H bear a certain statistical relationship to the letters W-E-T.\u201d

The first child starts to cry.

Two chemists are watching the children argue with each other. The first chemist says \u201cWow! After seeing an AI, these kids can debate the nature of water!\u201d

The second chemist says \u201cIronic, isn\u2019t it? After all, the children themselves don\u2019t understand what water is! Water is two hydrogen atoms plus one oxygen atom, and neither of them know!\u201d

The first chemist answers \u201cCome on. The child knows enough about water to say she understands it. She knows what it looks like. She knows what it tastes like. That\u2019s pretty much the basics of water.\u201d

The second chemist answers \u201cThose are just relationships between pieces of sense-data. The child knows that (visual perception of clear shiny thing) = (tactile perception of cold wetness) = (gustatory perception of refreshingness). And she can predict statistical relationships, like that if she sees someone throw a bucket of (visual perception of clear shiny thing) at her, she will soon feel (tactile perception of cold miserable sopping wetness). She uses the word \u201cwater\u201d as a concept-hook that links all of these relationships together and makes predicting the world much easier. But no matter how well she masters these facts, she can never connect them to H2O or any other real chemical facts about the world beyond mere sense-data.\u201d