The Putnam argument
"The phonograph-record argument: a robot only 'plays' behavior in the sense in which a phonograph record plays music. When we laugh at the joke of a robot, we are really appreciating the wit of the human programmer, and not the wit of the robot. The reprogramming argument: a robot has no real character of its own. It could at any time be reprogrammed to behave in the reverse of the way it has previously behaved. But a human being who was 'reprogrammed' (say, by a brain operation performed by a race with a tremendously advanced science), so as to have a new and completely predetermined set of responses, would no longer be a human being (in the full sense), but a monster. . .
The first argument ignores the possibility that robots learn. . . . The second argument, like the first, assumes that 'programmed' behavior must be wholly predictable and lack all spontaneity" (H. Putnam, 1975, p. 396-7).
Reference
Putnam, Hilary. 1975. Robots: Machines or Artificially Created Life? Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers Volume 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 386-407. Originally in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. LXI, November 1964, pp 668-91.
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