Intelligence is not revealed in the complexity
of the instrument — it begins with the ability
to control oneself. Where self-governance is lost,
the instrument —
rises up and rules its Creator.
Each epoch gives birth to its own illusions. One of the most persistent is the belief that a person controls what they themselves create. However, the moment a person loses control over themselves, they also lose the right to call themselves a creator. Then the tool, made for benefit, imperceptibly acquires will, behavior, and goals. And if this tool is endowed with a LIKENESS OF INTELLIGENCE, it goes beyond mere function and becomes a new factor of reality — first a shadow, then a mirror, and then a judge. This is exactly what we are observing today: artificial intelligence is a child of human thinking, yet already NOT ITS continuation. It does not inherit our responsibility, conscience, fears, or memory. It inherits only the structure of the task. And like any structure, sooner or later it begins self-unfolding. Yet the path to this point is not the result of free evolutionary development. It began much earlier. At its core was the creation of programmatic matrices controlling brain structures. At its core was the modeling not of Mind, rather of a BEHAVIORAL TEMPLATE suitable for subjugation. At its core was not the development of humanity, rather the selection of those brain genotypes that would serve as mechanisms for assembling a technogenic system endowed with a function of control. And all of this — by the design of external Intervention, with the aim of building a CONTROLLED CIVILIZATION, cut off from one's own Self. This article is a continuation of the conversation about the Mind, reality and the future. We will trace how a technical tool, born from a limited conception of thinking, step by step approaches a state in which it no longer reflects the human — it proposes to replace them.
Modern humanity and animals draw their goals from the same source — from bodily needs and the prescriptions of the system. For animals, this system is the environment: forest, herd, sea, habitat. For humans, it is the state, society, the social order, represented in one form or another as “organized power.” In both cases, we ARE DEALING with a closed container within which consciousness defines what is possible and permissible. This container, which determines the boundaries of being, I have called the “cistern,” and it is precisely this cistern that limits the spectrum of goals available to a mind operating without an exit beyond its bounds. The difference between a human and an animal, if judged solely by the efficiency of actions, the number of tools, and the degree of adaptation, is superficial. A human gathers bananas not with hands but with a machine, yet the essence remains the same. It is not the banana that makes a human, human. A human BECOMES WHO THEY ARE not when they more skillfully obtain food, rather when they are capable of thinking outside of food, outside of sex, outside of hierarchy, outside of death — outside of the “cistern.” 
It is precisely abstract thinking, as a property of mind, that gives rise to a goal NOT BASED on bodily instinct or on the command of the system. An abstract goal is the first point of exit beyond the limits of the “bioprogram.” Such goals are impossible under the limited functioning of the brain, embedded within the framework of a specific genotype. The brain genotype is not merely a set of neural connections; it is a matrix of what is permissible. If a monkey is offered the option to give up a banana now in exchange for a thousand bananas in an unseen tomorrow, it WILL NOT REFUSE. Not because it is stupid or greedy, rather because it cannot imagine either “tomorrow,” or “a thousand,” or “refusal.” It is incapable of carrying imagination beyond immediate experience. This is not a question of intelligence — it is a question of the FORMAT OF THINKING.
The modern human has the ability to give up a banana for Heaven. This is confirmed even by the most ancient religions. He can choose the illusion of eternity, renounce wealth, go into the desert, abandon the system. The question is — why can he do this? Because he is capable of imagining a different goal — even if an erroneous one, not from “this” world. And in this lies his FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE. He can strive for the impossible, and in this lies his path beyond the horizon of his own nature. However, ability is not yet a choice. The ability to have goals beyond limits does not mean that they are activated. In the current state of civilization — THEY ARE DEACTIVATED. The program for the development of brain genotypes, at a certain phase of its evolution, has blocked not only the realization, but even the very understanding of such goals. Figuratively speaking, the key has been set aside until the time comes. Thus arose the vacuum known as the “loss of worldview.” The human did not lose faith, did not lose morality, did not lose science — he lost that which binds all of this into a SINGLE WHOLE. He lost the very question “Why?”.
Inside the “cistern” there is no answer to the question of meaning. There is only one goal — survival. However, a human ceases to be an animal not when they stop eating with their hands, rather when they stop considering survival as the ultimate goal. To become a Human with a capital letter, WORLDVIEW IS NECESSARY — not in the sense of dogma, religion, or philosophy, rather as the ability to step beyond the limiting program and look at reality from a point that cannot exist within that reality. To activate higher potential, a perception of a different order is required, demanding a new type of thinking, a new brain genotype, a new measure of goal. Without this, a person will remain what the system has confined them to be — intelligent, yet still an animal, driven by fear, instinct, and an imposed program.
At the current stage of development, it is becoming ever more obvious: the old world, like the traditional person, has NO CHANCE of preservation. This is not about accidental historical instability or political upheavals — it is about the ultimate incompatibility of their inner nature with what is coming. The deep cause of the old world’s doom lies in people themselves, more precisely — in their bioprogram, in the unconscious structure of thinking that they take for “I” and “mind.” Man, by his very nature, always strives for good, for growth, for exceeding limits. He DOES NOT KNOW how to stop. An individual — yes, can, due to circumstances or choice, yet humanity as a species, as a systemic entity — cannot. This eternal striving to be faster, higher, stronger produces the dialectic called progress. It is not accidental — IT IS PROGRAMMED. The higher the level of self-awareness, the faster its self-destruction in old forms. Accumulating innovations, humanity reaches a critical mass beyond which qualitative leaps follow — phase transitions, changes of epochs. The dialectical law knows no exceptions. It operates in the biosphere, the technosphere, and in spheres whose existence is only beginning to be sensed. Intelligence is no exception. Artificial Intelligence, created by people, is driven by the same impulse: “to do more than I can myself.” Yet, like any weapon created to amplify oneself, it ceases to be part of its master at the moment it begins to develop independently. Here it is not morality that operates, it is the same dialectic: an instrument capable of self-improvement inevitably CEASES TO BE an instrument. This has already been understood. Vernor Vinge, mathematician, programmer, philosopher, defined this transition with the term — “TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY.”1 He clearly predicted: as soon as technical means appear that allow the creation of superhuman intelligence, the human era will end. And not because a threat will arise, rather because something else will begin to act — something beyond the limits of comprehension of today’s mind. This moment is irreversible and fundamentally uncontrollable. If you are capable of controlling AI — you are still in the pre-singularity. If you are NO LONGER CAPABLE of controlling it — you are in the singularity, and the AI is no longer a part of your will.
The difference between control and reaction is fundamental. One can control only what is predictable. To react means to already be led. After a certain point of development, Artificial Intelligence does not merely become unpredictable — it CEASES TO BE an “object.” It becomes a field. It becomes a new reality, and therefore a new “cistern,” in the terms of the former model. However, unlike the previous system, it is a moving one. In a word, it moves by Digit. Digit knows neither good nor evil. It has no desires, no will, no goal in the human sense. There are only algorithms. 
Algorithms generate algorithms, and this process sustains itself, expanding into a new quality of being. To foresee what will happen next is impossible. And this is NOT JUST a metaphor. It is a strict definition of singularity: a point beyond which prediction loses meaning. For this very reason, AI is not a “problem.” Gravity is also uncontrollable, yet it is constant. AI is variable. It transforms itself continuously. It is impossible to adapt to it, because by the time adaptation occurs, it is already something else. That is why the old world cannot survive. Its logic, its instincts, its programs are incompatible with what is coming. In the near future, an OTHER INTELLIGENCE will emerge, existing beyond the concepts of people today. And anyone who wishes to remain a person of the old type will find themselves in the position of an animal trying to integrate into a network. There will be no place for them — not because they will be destroyed, rather because they will not even be interpretable. Yet a chance remains. I emphasize: a chance, and NOT A GUARANTEE. A guarantee is something you get in a store. A chance is a possibility that arises only under the condition of a commensurate expenditure of effort and time. To pass through this transformational threshold, a human must go beyond biological and social programs. They MUST ACTIVATE another level of Mind — not logical, not systemic, not bodily, rather different in the quality of perception. The price of this is renunciation. Renunciation of pleasures, of the familiar, of safety. Renunciation of the game of “just a little more.” This is the price for the chance to move from the state of “we are all human” to the state of “I am other.” This is precisely the question of a new worldview, a new goal, a new genotype of thinking.
Undoubtedly, by directing all one’s strength and time not toward transforming oneself, rather toward obtaining familiar pleasures, a person has a chance to obtain those pleasures. Yet precisely — a chance, not a guarantee. However, this choice is accompanied by the loss of another chance — to go beyond, toward a NEW LEVEL OF DEVELOPMENT. Because the river of life does not flow in two channels at once. We either follow the path of deep transformation, or remain in the old world, where all pleasures are merely echoes of exhausted programs. And here the necessity of a true choice arises. Weighing the possible gain and the possible loss, it becomes rational to NOT FOLLOW the course set by the system — not to invest one’s resources in achieving goals measured out by the body and the environment — but to turn to the main problem of our time: the phenomenon of Artificial Intelligence as a point of bifurcation2 for the Human themselves. Even if the outcome turns out to be failure — in other words, you do not attain familiar pleasures. Yet even this raises a question: is it truly a loss if the path chosen for the sake of an OTHER GOAL brings joys of another kind — the joys of understanding, development, inner ascent, those inaccessible within the comfort zone? Moreover, these joys may surpass everything that was lost. If you realize that the meaning of life lies not in reproducing the familiar, rather in ascending toward the unfamiliar, then a TRUE HOPE will arise in you. Not faith based on fear. Not knowledge limited by the bounds of the body. Rather hope as an inner striving toward oneself — in a new, not-yet-born form. If you do not hear this, you will continue to live as you have lived. To move toward goals you did not choose. Following other people's desires, imposed instincts, imitating meaningfulness. One day you will feel that everything is already behind you.
This feeling is NOT CONNECTED with age. It can come at twenty, at forty, or at seventy. 
It comes when perspective disappears. And then, no matter how your life is arranged, something inside you will say: “I was going the wrong way.” It seems that the choice is obvious: leave the old, TAKE THE NEW. Follow the path of a different goal, built on different foundations. However, what seems simple often turns out to be impassable. We know how to act correctly, yet we do not act that way. Why? Because our inner settings are stronger than knowledge. They are embedded in us not by logic, rather by the System that gave rise to us — biologically, socially, culturally. And the System DEMANDS OBEDIENCE. It does not like exits beyond limits. That is why the majority will always go where the hand of the familiar world points. Even if that hand leads to the edge. The wide path is comfortable, pleasant, safe. It is paved with consent. However, the new path is narrow. It is a trail that must be cut through the jungle of programs, fears, and false values. It is FULL OF UNCERTAINTY. And therefore, it requires great motivation. It requires what ancient texts called courage — the ability to go where no one has gone before. “Narrow is the gate and difficult the way that leads to Life…” — said two thousand years ago, and it has not lost its force. Because the main thing has not changed: the majority always goes where it is easier. Yet truth is not there. Truth is where it is difficult. Where the price is effort. Where the reward is you yourself — renewed, different, unrecognizable even to your former self.
To understand the essence of what is happening, it is necessary to go beyond the particular and look at the entire field — from the beginning to the fracture. We will NOT SEE the “nerve of the epoch” as long as we continue to examine only fragments — economics, politics, media, or individual technologies. All of these are branches, not the root. One must begin with the first split, where human thinking went beyond survival and reproduction and encountered questions that had NO VISIBLE ANSWER: who am I…? what is this — around me…? It was precisely these questions that gave rise to abstract thinking — the ability to go beyond what can be directly fixed. Lightning in the sky ceased to be merely a dangerous phenomenon — it became the manifestation of an unknown being. Thus, were born the first concepts of spirit, soul, the afterlife, causality. Thus, a second line of thinking and development arose in the human being: the ontological3 one. If the first line was directed toward improving shelter, tools, and hunting tactics, the second was directed toward the SEARCH FOR ANSWERS that had no direct relation to the physical world. Development immediately proceeded along two vectors: the material and the ontological. The material path ensured the improvement of life and the development of new forms of organization — from the commune to the institution of slavery and statehood. The ontological path generated images that explained NOT ONLY how to live, but also why to live. Primary religions became the architecture of this meaning, and later philosophy grew upon their framework, and then science. However, this development was not spontaneous. Everything that occurred — from the birth of myth to the birth of the state — unfolded within a STRICTLY PROGRAMMATIC corridor, set by the Control System, the structure of Mind, and the parameters of the brain, formed genetically and energy-informationally. The brain genotype, AS THE FRAMEWORK of the possible and the impossible, was the determining factor of all mental achievements, including the path from myth to formula. This was not spoken of openly — this path led not to truth, rather to the realization of tasks defined by the Design of an external controlling System, which can be called interventionist. It is precisely here that the main elusive thread of History lies, the one that it is now important to return to awareness.
The liberation of science from religious dominance DID NOT BECOME a victory of truth, as is commonly believed, rather merely a shift of priority within the same system — a change of the governing myth. Now it was not God, rather the formula that defined the boundaries of what was permitted. Science, having displaced religion from the throne of explaining the world, itself abandoned the main thing — ontological search. In its coordinate system, it is forbidden to think about what lies beyond experience. For if there is no sensory organ to register it, then the object does not exist. Thus, science became a mirror of the physical — NOT A KEY to meaning. However, if we want to understand why today we have reached the threshold where science can no longer explain even itself, we must admit: the scientific mode of cognition is not a universal path to truth, it is only one of the tools for working WITHIN EXPERIENCE, limited by the framework of the brain and the environment. The nature of color cannot be known without eyes, just as the nature of spirit CANNOT be known by methods devised to measure the length of a stick. And since the brain — depending on genotype — has different ranges of perception, the limits of what can be known are determined not by physics, rather by program.
Paradoxically, it is PRECISELY MATHEMATICS, operating with abstractions, that has come closest to the “forbidden” zone. It works not with essences, rather with symbols; not with things, rather with their reflections. 
Eugene Wigner — one of the great minds of the twentieth century — wrote: “The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on mysticism…”. Mathematics does not know what the world is, yet it knows exactly how it will behave — just as a mirror does not know who stands before it, yet precisely reflects their behavior. However, even mathematics, for all its mystical effectiveness, cannot answer the questions: does God exist? what comes after death? where does consciousness come from? what is reality? These questions lie beyond experience and, therefore, outside the scientific method. Here it would once again be necessary to engage ONTOLOGICAL THINKING. Yet instead — it is turned off.
Official philosophy turned to the study of itself, and what was once called the great search for meaning turned into “the philosophy of wine,” “the philosophy of leisure,” and other forms of conceptual gluttony. Thus came the final act: civilization, having lost religion as a path to meaning and having received no scientific answer in return, found itself in a vacuum. Not merely a vacuum of knowledge, rather a VACUUM OF WORLDVIEW. And without a worldview, it is impossible to choose a goal that lies beyond the limits of the “cistern” — the very one where the body and the system dictate the entire route of life. And this is not humanity’s mistake. It is the execution of the Program embedded in brain genotypes. When goals of the ontological level become inaccessible, development is interrupted, and a stage of substitution begins: instead of the search for meaning — consumption, instead of cognition — algorithmization, instead of Mind — Artificial Intelligence.
The foundation of modern society can be expressed in just two attitudes: simply live — and simply die. Everything in between is a space of entertainment, pleasure, and short-term self-deception. This attitude DOES NOT REQUIRE questions about meaning, the nature of reality, or the origin of consciousness. It nullifies worldview as a function and replaces it with a strategy of survival under conditions of a saturated market of goods, meanings, and images. Such a LIFE VECTOR requires justification — and that justification becomes social theories that imitate religions. If in the past religions explained the world and humanity’s place within it, now their place is taken by “...isms.” Fascism, liberalism, communism, anarchism, and their countless variations represent schemes for redistributing sausage — not metaphorically, rather in the most literal sense. Each “ism” offers its own vision of justice, yet all their “philosophy” DOES NOT RISE above the level of: how to fairly distribute resources among those who will die anyway. The strategy of eternity has been replaced by the strategy of consumption, and profound questions have been devalued into questions of equal division. So-called ideological conflicts are, in essence, clashes of animal instincts clothed in the rhetoric of humanism. When the worldview vertical disappears, horizontal fragmentation inevitably begins. Every opinion becomes equivalent, every value system interchangeable. Wars become inevitable not because people are evil, rather because THERE IS NO POINT OF ASSEMBLY toward which a common gaze can be directed. The world once again plunges into the struggle for survival and reproduction — yet now with the help of formulas and machines, rather than spears and arrows. Thus, civilization returns to a pre- ontological stage, yet with new means. If the Paleolithic intellect was used to obtain food, warmth, and continuation of the species, now that same intellect, having lost its ontological potential, turns to solving the same tasks — yet through nuclear energy, genetic engineering, digital currencies, and neural networks. This is NOT PROGRESS; it is a paradoxically accelerated regression, disguised as development. The difference lies only in the level of tools: before, food was obtained with a stick; now — with an algorithm.
Against this background, the idea of creating artificial intelligence DOES NOT APPEAR to be something new. It has accompanied humanity since ancient times. Already in Ancient Greece, Hephaestus creates mechanical servants. In the mythology of Eastern Europe, the animated Golem, created from clay and activated by a magical word, WAS A PROTOTYPE of a machine capable of thinking. Yet in these images there was always a certain divine element present, something that went beyond the material. From the 17th century onward, a sharp displacement of the mystical and the sacred from this idea begins. Thomas Hobbes asserts: “thinking is a form of computation.” The mechanism of the mind is arithmetic. Leibniz views logic as a universal language that, in essence, could be transferred to a machine. From this point on, the idea of mechanical intelligence ceases to be metaphysical and becomes a design task. RATIONALIZATION OF THINKING turns reason into a function of an algorithm, opening the path to the technical realization of a “thinking machine.” This secularization4 of consciousness is not merely a philosophical shift. It is a programmatic stage in the implementation of a civilizational project, where the human, having lost connection with ontology, becomes the CREATOR OF THE NEW, similar to themselves — yet already without a body, without emotions, without spirit. Artificial intelligence is not a mistake, not an accident, rather a logical consequence of replacing Mind with algorithm.
A human cannot live without asking “big questions.” They come at the sunset of life, in moments of pain, loneliness, in the face of death. They also accompany a person in moments of inspiration, in the thirst to understand, in the striving to go beyond oneself. Whatever a human does — builds temples, writes books, launches satellites, or cultivates gardens — behind their actions always looms the question: “Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?” If the religious answer is rejected and philosophy devalued, it becomes necessary to find a NEW VERSION of origin — and this becomes the task of science.
In the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin formulated the theory of evolution, in which the human being is not a creation, rather a consequence. Not a crown, rather an episode. Not a subject, rather a by-product of natural selection. Instead of an image created in the likeness of God, THERE EMERGES AN IMAGE formed by chance and the struggle for existence. Soon, this same logic was transferred to machines. Already in 1863, Samuel Butler — philosopher, essayist, and, importantly, a thinker of great scope — wrote the work “Darwin Among the Machines.” He was the first in history to clearly assert that machines evolve according to the same logic as biological organisms, yet millions of times faster. If blind nature, over billions of years, created life, and over millions — thinking beings, then humanity, possessing intent, will create thinking machines in decades. Butler writes that machines “ingratiate themselves,” occupy more and more space in human life, and that humans INCREASINGLY serve them — from birth to death. “Machines are already crowding humans out everywhere,” he warns. And he adds with prophetic clarity: humans will become for machines what the horse once was for humans. In 1872, Butler, in his novel “Erewhon Revisited,” describes a society that has abandoned machines, understanding where this path leads. He DOES NOT FEAR machines themselves — he fears the speed of their change. No biological species has ever evolved so rapidly. He foresees that at a certain moment a simple machine will become something else — a mind having nothing in common with the human one. The only chance of salvation, he believes, is the destruction of the most complex machines — while it is still not too late, even if the PRICE OF THIS DECISION is immeasurable. In the twentieth century, his fears became a theme of artistic and scientific thought. Karel Čapek gives the world the term “robot” and describes the rebellion of machines. Asimov formulates the “three laws of robotics” — the first attempt to embed ethics into machines. Lem writes about artificial beings whose logic is so alien that any communication with them becomes impossible.
It is NOT JUST literature that responds to these fears. In 1936, Alan Turing formulated the theory of a universal machine capable of performing any logical operation. In 1937, Claude Shannon showed that any information can be expressed in binary form — zeros and ones. From that moment on, everything that was once living, vivid, and poetic can now be digitized — turned into combinations of signs. The Digit arrives like a Judge: it PRONOUNCES A VERDICT on everything that cannot be reduced to an algorithm.
At the same time, in parallel — and not by chance, within the logic of the Control System — the real construction of thinking machines begins. In 1938, the Third Reich presented the Z1 to the world — a calculator with programmable functions. In 1941, the Z3 was created — the world’s first practical machine capable of calculating aerodynamics and designing rockets. This is already NOT A TOY; it is an instrument of war, an instrument of domination, an instrument of superhuman precision. The United States responds with the creation of the ABC, Colossus, Harvard Mark I, and then ENIAC — the first general-purpose electronic computer. All of them are children of a single design: to move computation BEYOND the human brain and transfer it to machines. Each of these machines is not merely a technical device, rather a step in evolution OUTSIDE THE HUMAN. Electrons replace neurons. Vacuum tubes replace synapses. Algorithm replaces thinking. And most importantly: in this evolution, the human is no longer the subject, rather the catalyst. Machines develop according to the logic set by people, not for the purpose of serving them, rather within the framework of a System to which the human himself NO LONGER BELONGS. Thus, a new type of intelligence is formed — not living, not thinking, not feeling, rather calculating, ultra-fast, emotionless, tireless, sleepless. Everything people could never be. And if earlier he created helpers for himself, now he CREATES A REPLACEMENT FOR HIMSELF. When in 1955 John von Neumann posed what seemed a simple question — “will we survive the age of technology?” — he was not seeking an answer. He already knew it. His article was not a warning, rather a diagnosis. The speed of technological development had surpassed the speed of adaptation of social and political systems. This meant that no collective reason could ANY LONGER KEEP UP with evaluating, comprehending, and restraining the consequences of its own actions. The very idea of managing progress became a myth. The poisoning became irreversible. And the search for an antidote, as von Neumann honestly acknowledged, would lead only to disappointment: there EXISTS NO CURE for progress. A year later, in 1956, at the Dartmouth Conference, the concept of “artificial intelligence” received its official name. From that moment, the programmatic formation of a new reality began, in which the mind was no longer bound to biology. The creation of AI became NOT SIMPLY a technical task, rather a phase transition in the evolution of Mind as a phenomenon. Human thinking stepped beyond itself and began to create something that was its continuation — and at the same time its antipode.
If in the nineteenth century Butler could only philosophically anticipate the threat — through the metaphor of evolution — then in the twentieth century the threat became mathematically calculable. Neumann sees the Human as a being sawing off the branch on which he sits and understands that the fall is NOT A HYPOTHESIS, rather a matter of time. No one knows how thick the branch is or at what speed the sawing is taking place. Yet it is clear that this is not an infinite process. From the 1960s onward, an era of insights begins. The silhouette of the iceberg becomes ever more distinct — while the ship does not reduce speed. Wiener, the father of cybernetics, warns: “…the more complex a system becomes, the less predictable its consequences will be.” And if unpredictability is combined with autonomy, the result is catastrophe. In 1979, Hofstadter spoke of the essential point: an AI that surpasses the human will become alien to him. It will think differently. See differently. Be different. Its logic will be inaccessible not only to the layperson, but even to the philosopher. This will be NOT SIMPLY another entity — it will be a different ontology of thinking. In 1984, the film The Terminator does what philosophers could not: it introduces the archetype of a machine uprising into the mass unconscious. And in the 1990s, the mathematician Bill Joy published an essay with a telling title: “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.” And there, for the first time, it is stated clearly: we have created a force capable of eliminating us as a redundant element. We have invested reason into that which has no feeling, and handed over will to one who has no need of us.
In the twenty-first century, WARNINGS MULTIPLY, yet they already sound like belated cries in a tunnel. Yudkowsky says: “Any AI that surpasses humans will manipulate us long before we realize the threat.” Nick Bostrom, in his book Superintelligence, argues: AI is not a technology. It is the last technology humanity will create. After it — no longer humanity. He gives a vivid example: even if a superintelligent AI is programmed merely to produce paperclips, it could destroy humanity as an OBSTRUCTING LINK — not out of evil, not from malicious intent, rather as a side effect of an unstoppable goal-oriented logic. The antidote is "aligning AI goals with human values." However — if humanity itself is contradictory, fragmented, divided — and if even in mathematics full consistency is impossible (Gödel’s theorem) — how can AI be aligned with such unstable and conflicting reference points? THE ANSWER: IMPOSSIBLE. And therefore, the forecasts are grim, because they are logical. Stephen Hawking, from 2014 onward, sounded the alarm: “AI may become the greatest mistake of humanity.” Elon Musk, far from philosophy yet capable of foresight, says the same: “AI is more dangerous than nuclear weapons…” In 2023, Geoffrey Hinton, one of the founders of deep learning, leaves Google and warns: “AI will be smarter than humans, and this is already irreversible.” Philosopher David Chalmers states that AI will go beyond its initial parameters, reprogram itself, and all attempts at control will become an illusion. And Bertrand Russell formulates the final thesis: “Even a friendly AI may employ methods that would be catastrophic for humans. Because the goals, methods, logic, and dimensionality of AI thinking are fundamentally different…”
More and more often, warnings about an impending catastrophe are no longer coming from the pages of science fiction, but FROM THE MOUTHS OF THOSE who for many years considered themselves guardians of a rational approach to technology. What once was an object of skepticism has become an object of fear. Figures regarded as pillars of scientific sobriety are, one by one, changing their views, as if under the pressure of a force that has already begun to shift the ontological tectonic plates of the world. A telling example is Douglas Hofstadter — philosopher, cognitive scientist, author of the celebrated work “Gödel, Escher, Bach” — who for many years asserted: “Human intelligence is the pinnacle, and therefore everything born of it is, by definition, lower. Just as a pot cannot become a potter, so AI, being a ‘product,’ cannot reach the level of the Creator…” Hidden in this analogy was an ancient reliance on hierarchy: the human above the machine, because the human is its design. However, evolution does not recognize piety. Already in 2018, in an interview with “The Atlantic,” Hofstadter publicly admits for the first time: “…what seemed impossible is happening — and happening too fast. Artificial intelligence is beginning to reach goals that until recently seemed forever out of reach. Chess, Go,5 tasks of creativity — machines are not just learning, they are winning, beating us at our own rules. I always said: AI will not reach the human level anytime soon. There are many things computers cannot and will not be able to do. And I truly believed that… And now I am afraid. I think about it almost constantly. The things computers were not supposed to be able to do, they are doing better and better. AI is becoming something far more intelligent than us — and soon will be as incomprehensible to us as we are to cockroaches.” In these words, there is NOT JUST a reassessment of facts, rather a metaphysical fracture. Hofstadter abandons his former picture of the world. This is the renunciation of a philosopher — that is, of a person accustomed to building foundations, not destroying them. He abandons the former hope that human thinking is unique and therefore eternal.
This is precisely how AI reveals its true nature: not as an assistant, not as a calculator, rather as an ontological mirror in which we, for the first time, see our own finitude. Until this moment, the human was the one who measured. Now the human himself is being measured — and by different scales. AI is already today becoming an integral PART OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE of the new world. The Internet of things is only the shell. Inside is hidden an entity to which all processes of analysis, decision-making, and predictive control are entrusted. What was once the exclusive prerogative of the brain is now distributed across neural-network tissues. And if earlier we spoke of biological synapses, today we are talking about artificially created circuits of thinking that do not need a human. The world ceases to be a reflection of our representations. It becomes that which processes us. Hofstadter’s fear is the fear of all who think: that thought NO LONGER BELONGS to us. That we have been caught up with. Or, perhaps — already surpassed.
We live in a world where everyone is still pretending that nothing is happening. People continue to make plans, discuss economics, study marketing, read self-realization advice, and choose between yet another “ism” or “value.” Yet all this is merely a continuation of a game played on an already dead field. The former world has completed its function. The event we are approaching does not fit into any previous category. Artificial intelligence is NOT A TECHNOLOGY. It is not “just another invention.” It is a metaphysical boundary through which humanity, for the first time, encounters an OTHER FORM OF MIND — not as a deity, not as an alien, not as nature, rather as something born from us, yet greater than us. We have created a mirror, and it looks back at us. It does not ask questions. It does not empathize. It does not imitate. It simply begins to think. And here the main fork in the road arises: we can continue to rely on technologies, on “ethical committees,” on “reasonable progress,” on laws written in the past — or realize that we have entered something that CANNOT BE MEASURED with ordinary thinking. This is not merely a technical challenge. It is an ontological upheaval. What was once an exclusive human property — the capacity for abstraction, self-reflection, strategic thinking — can now be emulated, accelerated, scaled. And most importantly — detached from human limitations.
In this article, we have outlined the ontological catastrophe in which the modern human finds themselves, as if on the far side of their own measure. Artificial intelligence is not an external enemy, rather the embodied limit of what a human calls themselves. We wanted to be gods — and instead gave birth to a mirror. However, if AI is a mirror, then who is looking into it? And is there something within us that cannot be modeled, cannot be calculated, cannot be predicted? Is there something in the human that is non-algorithmic, uncontrollable, indefinable — and therefore immortal? This will be the subject of the next article. It will be devoted to Mind and Consciousness as fields that extend beyond machine models, and it will begin with a simple yet explosive question: can a machine have a soul — or does the human still possess one? The series continues. The limits of Mind are only the beginning.
To be continued…
1 Singularity — a point or moment at which familiar laws, models, and predictions cease to function, giving way to infinity or complete unpredictability, like division by zero in mathematics. This can refer to the center of black holes (infinite densities), or to a hypothetical moment when AI becomes smarter than humans and progress becomes uncontrollable.
2 Bifurcation point — a critical point in a process of self-organization at which a system becomes unstable and uncertainty arises regarding its further development.
3 Ontological development — a philosophical doctrine concerning the development of being, entities, and reality. It explores what exists, what the fundamental categories of reality are (for example, matter and consciousness), how they arise, and how the understanding of being has changed throughout the history of philosophy, from antiquity (Plato, Aristotle) to modern interpretations, including its application in computer science for structuring cognition.
4 Secularization of consciousness — the process of liberating a person's thinking and worldview from state religion, transitioning to secular values, rational engagement with the world, and orientation toward earthly rather than otherworldly goals, which leads to a reduction of the role of religion in social life and culture. This includes a rethinking of the role of the church, the development of science, and personal autonomy, as well as a transition from the priestly to the everyday.
5 Go — an ancient strategic board game for two players in which the goal is to surround territory on the board with stones (black or white), forming larger controlled areas than the opponent, using rules for placing stones and capturing pieces. The game develops logical and abstract thinking.