Watson has the inside track on the “Jeopardy!” contest Monday Feb. 14, when the IBM computer system called “Watson” faces off against past “Jeopardy!” champs, says Ray Kurzweil. “But if it doesn’t win, it will come close, and it will come back and win in the very near future. Because it’s only going to get better. And humans are not getting better.”

Based on his calculations of the accelerating rate of growth of computing power, Kurzweil in the 1980s accurately predicted that a computer would defeat a world chess champion in 1998. IBM’s Deep Blue beat world champion chess player Garry Kasparov in 1997.

USA Today video interview with Ray Kurzweil