Abstract
Abstract As debates around artificial intelligence (AI) discourses beyond the West draw increased attention in media and technology studies, Eastern Europe remains a neglected territory. Eastern European scholars, having emerged from Soviet constraints on intellectuals, have only recently entered this discipline. This chapter, looking to expand the canon of media theory and philosophy, investigates the allusions to AI in Summa Technologiae, a unique work at the intersection of philosophy and popular science published in 1964 by Polish intellectual and science fiction writer Stanisław Lem. Lem’s futurology, focusing on the relationship between technology and human cognitive capacities and evolutionary trajectories, anticipates discussions around possible models of AI. The chapter contextualizes Summa within the Polish intellectual scene at the time, which uniquely combined Catholic theology with cybernetics, and proposes a reading of Lem’s imagination of AI as a ‘gnostic machine’; an evolutionary, existential technology that operates at the limit of human comprehension.
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