Is Watson the New Generation?

In his chapter ...And Bodies, Ray Kurzweil writes about the developing technologies that one day might become a part of or take over our bodies and our minds. Kurzweil makes a claim that "our human-created computational technology will ultimately exceed the capacity of natural computation" because "electronic circuits are already millions times faster than human neural circuits". This notion relates to IBM's Watson, the computer who most likely beat his human competitors on Jeopardy! because of his speed at finding the answers.

However, the next question is: What is IBM going to do with Watson, now that he has proven himself to be on par, or even more advanced than a human brain? IBM has stated that Watson can be useful in many areas, including Medical and Health Services, Financial and Economic Analysis and Government.

However, as Kurzweil put it, these computational technologies are "human-created", which leaves them at the discrepancy of the humans that build them. We have all seen the fictional and dramatized versions of this scenario, such as SkyNet in the Terminator, where the technology actually outgrows the humans and begins to take control. Although there is no denying that these technologies are important to our society and will bring in huge benefits for us, I don't think it will ever reach the point of them getting out of hand and destroying the human race. At some point, the technology can only do so much as what the human has programmed it to do. Take for example Watson, he only knew the answers because there was preprogrammed information in his system, and sometimes he even got the answer wrong. Watson could not have won Jeopardy without this programmed info or without the practice games he took to help configure his information.