computer. You could simply create a table of all the possible inputs and all

Software 261 chem Pollock computer. You could simply create a table of all the possible inputs and all the possible outputs I would make and this would be a perfect facsimile of me. A number of people have posed this as an argument to refute Roger Penrose’s assertion that humans are capable of non-computable thought. But this analysis misses a key point. There is no way to calculate all the contents of this table. My past could be tabulated. It is the history of all the things I ever did, but my future cannot. I might yet discover some great theorem that could not be computably generated. This would be a part of my output which could not be generated by an algorithm or any mechanical process. This forms a non-computational arrow of time; we can write down the past, we cannot write out the future. If a creative person such as Andrew Wiles could be simulated in advance, we would have an automatic way to find a solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem. Since this is not possible, it follows that creative people cannot be simulated. This also means the Turing test is not passable by a machine. Humans can create; machines cannot. That is the difference. Will Computers Take over the World? Ray Kurzweil, the American inventor and futurologist, has suggested computers are getting exponentially faster and will soon reach such immense power they became effectively infinitely powerful. They could instantly answer any question posed and solve all our engineering problems. He dubs this point ‘the singularity’: a point of near infinite HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015951