The Chinese Room was an experiment proposed by American philosopher, John Searle, in 1980. A person who only spoke English was locked in a room, with only a small window to communicate with the outside world. Any communication would be written, but he had a Chinese dictionary with him. Notes written in Chinese would be sent into the room through the window, and the person in the room was able to translate and respond using the dictionary. Even though he didn't understand Chinese, he was able to convince outsiders that he knew Chinese well because he used the dictionary.
Searle used this experiment to pass the Turing Test. No existing AIs could surpass the restrictions of the Chinese Room test. To the person asking the questions, the computer responded as if it were intelligent, while in reality it had no idea what was going on.
