1988 sci-fi short story imagined an emergent Chinese Room that answered back
toptickcrypto · x · 2026-09-18
A fun sci-fi anecdote circulating in AI circles: a short story in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction around 1988 featured a protagonist who detected signals encoded in the shirt colors people wore, interpreted them as an emergent Searles Chinese Room, and hired actors to wear specific colors to communicate with it — and got a response: "WHO IS THAT?!?!?"
The poster ordered a copy of the July 1986 Amazing Stories issue and plans to scan it in a week.
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