Watson is the IBM computer built by David Ferrucci and his team of 25 research scientists tasked with designing an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can rival human champions at the game of Jeopardy. After beating the greatest Jeopardy champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, in February 2011, the computer is now being employed in more practical tasks such as answering diagnostic medical questions.

I have a question: Does Watson know that it won Jeopardy? Did it think, “Oh, yeah! I beat the great Ken Jen!”? In other words, did Watson feel flushed with pride after its victory? This has been my standard response when someone asks me about the great human-versus-machine Jeopardy shoot-out; people always respond in the negative, understanding that such self-awareness is not yet the province of computers. So I put the line of inquiry to none other than Ferrucci at a recent conference. His answer surprised me: “Yes, Watson knows it won Jeopardy.” I was skeptical: How can that be, since such self-awareness is not yet possible in computers? “Because I told it that it won,” he replied with a wry smile.

Of course. You could even program Watson to vocalize a Howard Dean–like victory scream, but that is still a far cry from its feeling triumphant. That level of self-awareness in computers, and the time when it might be achieved, was a common theme at the Singularity Summit held in New York City on the weekend of October 15–16, 2011. There hundreds of singularitarians gathered to be apprised of our progress toward the date of 2045, set by visionary computer scientist Ray Kurzweil as being when computer intelligence will exceed that of all humanity by one billion times, humans will realize immortality, and technological change will be so rapid and profound that we will witness an intellectual event horizon beyond which, like its astronomical black hole namesake, life is not the same.

I was at once both inspired and skeptical. When asked my position on immortality, for example, I replied, “I’m for it!” But wishing for eternal life—and being offered unprovable ways of achieving it—has been a theme for billions of people throughout history. My baloney-detection alarm goes off whenever a soothsayer writes himself and his generation into the forecast, proclaiming that the Biggest Thing to Happen to Humanity Ever will occur in the prophet’s own lifetime. I abide by the Copernican principle that we are not special. For once, I would like to hear a futurist or religious diviner predict that “it” is going to happen in, say, the year 2525 or 7510. But where’s the hope in that? Herein lies the appeal of Kurzweil and his band of singularity hopefuls. No matter how distressing it may be when the bad news daily assaults our senses, our eyes should be on the prize just over the horizon. Be patient.

Patience is what we are going to need because, in my opinion, we are centuries away from AI matching human intelligence. As California Institute of Technology neuroscientist Christof Koch noted in narrating the wiring diagram of the entire nervous system of Caenorhabditis elegans, we are clueless in understanding how this simple roundworm “thinks,” much less in explicating (and reproducing in a computer) a human mind billions of times more complex. We don’t even know how our brain produces conscious thoughts or where the “self” is located (if it can be found anywhere at all), much less how to program a machine to do the same. Pop rock duo Zager and Evans were probably closer in their 1969 hit song In the Year 2525’s prediction that the biggest milestones would happen between the years 2525 and 9595, their exordium and terminus.

An irony: amid all this highfalutin braggadocio of how close we are to computers taking over the world and emulating human thought, I had to give my talk on the “social singularity” (progress in political, economic and social systems over the past 10,000 years) early because Rice University computer scientist James McLurkin could not get his small swarm of robots to work. Either someone’s wireless mic or the room’s wireless network was interfering with the tiny robots’ communications system, and no one could figure out how to solve the problem. My prediction for the Singularity: we are 10 years away … and always will be.

As a skeptic, I am often asked my position on immortality. “I’m for it, of course,” is my wiseacre reply.

Unfortunately, every one of the 100 billion humans who have ever lived has died, so the outlook does not bode well. Unless you follow the trend line generated by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman in Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever (Rodale, 2004): “The rate of technical progress is doubling every decade, and the capability (price performance, capacity, and speed) of specific information technologies is doubling every year. Because of this exponential growth, the 21st century will equal 20,000 years of progress at today’s rate of progress.” Within a quarter of a century, the authors say, “nonbiological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence,” then “soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge.” Biotechnologies, such as designer drugs and genetic engineering, will halt the aging process; nanotechnologies, such as nanorobots, will repair and replace cells, tissues and organs (including brains), reversing the aging process and allowing us to live forever.

To make it to this secular Second Coming (2030 by their calculation), you need “Ray and Terry’s Longevity Program,” which includes 250 supplements a day and weekly rounds of intravenous “nutritionals.” To boost antioxidant levels, for example, Kurzweil suggests a concoction of “alpha lipoic acid, coenzyme Q10, grape-seed extract, resveratrol, bilberry extract, lycopene, silymarin, conjugated linoleic acid, lecithin, evening primrose oil (omega-6 essential fatty acids), n-acetyl-cysteine, ginger, garlic, 1-carnitine, pyridoxal-5-phosphate, and echinacea.” Bon appétit.

Kurzweil is a brilliant and creative mind—the inventor of the first optical character-recognition program and CCD flatbed scanner, creator of the first reading machine for the blind with a text-to-speech synthesizer, recipient of the 1999 National Medal of Technology, and inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. His books The Age of Intelligent Machine and The Age of Spiritual Machines significantly influenced the field of artificial intelligence. Thus, when Ray Kurzweil speaks, people listen. But my baloney-detection alarm went off in three areas of his work.

One, I am skeptical of the effectiveness of nutritional supplements. When I was bike racing in the 1980s, I went through a period of megadosing vitamins and minerals that produced brightly colored urine but no noticeable performance difference. The testimonials behind such nutritional claims are powerful, but the science is weak. The fact that the field is fraught with fads and ever changing claims for “X” as the elixir of health and longevity does not bode well. Nutritional science says that we get virtually all the vitamins and minerals we need through a balanced diet and that more is not better (see www.nutriwatch.org). These diets help us live longer lives, but no one can exceed the maximum human life span of 120 years. The 56-year-old Kurzweil declares that his program has reduced his biological age to about 40. I’m no aging expert or carny barker, but if I had to guess his age from his author photo I’d say, uh, 56.

Two, I question the idea of extrapolating trend lines very far into the future. Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable. Plus, in my opinion, the problems of creating artificial intelligence and halting aging are orders of magnitude harder than anyone has anticipated. Machine intelligence of a human nature could be a century away, and immortality is at least a millennium away, if not unattainable altogether.

Three, I am doubtful whenever people argue that the Big Thing is going to happen in their lifetime. Evangelicals never claim that the Second Coming is going to happen in the next generation (or that they will be “left behind” while others are saved). Likewise, secular doomsayers typically predict the demise of civilization within their allotted time (but that they will be part of the small surviving enclave). Prognosticators of both religious and secular utopias always include themselves as members of the chosen few. Hope springs eternal.