"The Chinese Room" is a thought experiment proposed by philosopher John Searle in 1980. It challenges the idea that a computer can truly understand language. In the scenario, a person inside a room follows English instructions to manipulate Chinese symbols, producing appropriate responses without understanding their meaning. The experiment raises questions about artificial intelligence and consciousness. While the person in the room can convincingly communicate in Chinese, they do not comprehend the language. This illustrates the difference between syntactic processing (manipulating symbols) and semantic understanding (grasping meaning), suggesting that machines may lack true understanding despite appearing intelligent.