With non-fictional works such as Summa technologiae (1964) and his science fictions like Golem XIV (1973), Stanisław Lem explored what we now call artificial intelligence (AI). Will AI eventually surpass humans, perhaps even dethrone them soon, and like Golem XIV, a supercomputer, give them a thorough dressing-down as early as in 2029?

In my portrait of Stanisław Lem (in German language) in the journal for philosophy der blaue reiter (No. 57), I explore how Lem arrived at his imaginative fictional visions and non-fictional outlooks, how he grappled with the prospects and limits of future technologies by means of thought experiments, and how he anticipated much of what is hotly debated today. Lem’s speculations were deeply rooted in cybernetics, yet they went far beyond it.