I split the idea into “attempt” when they didn’t seem to understand what was being talked about at all. After that, you could discuss if the attempt was successful. I think that because these systems can solve problems that involve the meanings of words, we can say there must be some meaning information encoded in the data.
> You need a human, with a human understanding of words, and language, and what those things mean, in order to decode the meaning from the words.
By this definition I think you’ll always have doubt about these systems.
Not necessarily. I'm describing the current situation, as I understand it. There's nothing stopping a future system from having the same abilities as a human to decode meaning from words, or to do anything else. But I for one would like to know exactly how such a system would work, and why it would have the capabilities it would have. I don't think that's a particularly high bar to clear, for technology and science. The whole point of both is to figure out how things work, and how to make them work like we want.
> You need a human, with a human understanding of words, and language, and what those things mean, in order to decode the meaning from the words.
By this definition I think you’ll always have doubt about these systems.