Perspectives and limits of artificial intelligence development: Stanislaw Lem’s ideas today

Undoubted successes in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) over the past half of century have created the illusion of continuity and even infinity of its development. It is supposed that very soon there will be a complete or almost complete displacement of humans from the sphere of economics, medicine, education, and the sphere of services in general. According to this scenario, people will be replaced by robots controlled by AI. Proponents of posthumanism advocated the idea of human improvement through information technologies and closely related nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, cognitive technologies, and even the latest social technologies. But now they are beginning to argue that AI may not be a part of human development, but the next evolutionary link that will replace humanity. Humans will become something like monkeys or will even die out like dinosaurs. Are there grounds for such fears? Is the threat to mankind from AI real? We believe that such a threat is mostly illusory – its modeling is possible only on the basis of linear extrapolations of individual achievements of mankind. Such extrapolations do not take into account the whole set of determinations that led to the emergence of AI, and even greater in scope and diversity of the set of determinations that will oppose the implementation of this apocalyptic scenario for humanity.