Sergey Lukyanenko: Now it is difficult to write anything without including artificial intelligence, which intensely penetrates everywhere

Sergey Lukyanenko: It is very pleasant to attend this event. Although I am not an "IT specialist," but a science fiction writer, I have had a lot to write in this direction. Surely someone read "Maze of Reflections," "Fake Mirrors." And it so happened that the first readers I had were "IT specialists" - there was such an ancient network "FidoNet" (FidoNet), where books were actively distributed. And it was a network of IT specialists, and not the current Internet, where everything and everything. So thanks for the invitation. It was especially nice to come out after awarding people who allow us to make modern films, because I am now also tightly engaged in cinema. But back to the question.

First, I will immediately emphasize the fact that artificial intelligence does not mean that this intelligence thinks, thinks. In fact, we are talking about modern neural networks.

Artificial intelligence burst into our lives very sharply and there are professions that have already felt its influence. The first victims were fellow artists. Many book illustrators, as well as people involved in the design of publications, suddenly found that now a good cover can make a neural network - by order of the author, if he clearly articulates what he needs. Artists cope with the situation, some begin to work together with neural networks. And on the example of artists, designers, we can try to predict how the situation will develop further.

For non-creative professions, the development of artificial intelligence, neural networks means very big changes. Most likely, in 5-10 years it will take the profession of a driver sitting behind the steering wheel of a car, who moves passengers or cargo from one point to another. In aviation, the pilot will still remain a duplicate element of the control system, but in general, neural networks in transport will displace people, Artificial intelligence will displace people in many knowledge-intensive, intellectual competencies. In any case, my friends - "IT specialists" complain that some of the decisions for them are already made neural networks, and they are made faster and even more optimal.

Writers are still easier. Authors have already appeared who are trying to write with the help of neural networks, but artificial intelligence so far produces only verbal garbage. Very beautiful, even, but - garbage. And if you write neural networks, for example, that a person entered the building, saw this and that, and then invite her to continue, develop the narrative, she will write another whole page in which nothing will happen. So the neural network is not yet able to create at the level of a person, a writer, but it can learn this, and in this case we will have such an entertaining phenomenon as books partially written by artificial intelligence.

In the same way, after some time - I am convinced of this - cartoons, films shot by the neural network will appear. Most likely, this will happen like this: you read a certain text (and it's good if the text is written by a person, not artificial intelligence), loaded into the corresponding program, asked to film, and then received a simplified video sequence at the output. As the technology evolves, this video sequence will become more and more like real cinema. You can offer something so that this character is played by a young Schwarzenegger, and this, for example, is Andrei Mironov.

Thus, the neural network is already replacing a number of professions, and first of all, these are professions that do not require a high level of creativity. And we may face a certain problem because of this, because some of the writers, artists, programmers will be out of work.

Sergey Lukyanenko: Fantastic at one time analyzed such issues very actively. If we recall, for example, Frank Herbert's famous novel Dune, the world described and shown in these books is a world that arose after people destroyed artificial intelligence. That is, in fact, there was a rebellion of people, new Luddites against technology.

Is it really possible? Probably, yes. If the process goes too quickly, then a large number of people are formed, forced to live on benefits, who have lost certain goals in life, and then social conflicts can occur.

It is somewhat easier for us in this regard, because we are a huge country, with great ambitions, and we are rather faced with a lack of people, qualified personnel. And if the neural network displaces professions with simplified functions, then for us this may benefit. Someone will have the opportunity to improve their professional level and rise higher, and someone - one of those who hardly pulled past work - may prefer to exist at some social state lows, or find another profession that turns out to be more suitable, correct for him. The danger of social rebellion primarily threatens countries that are actively developing, with large numbers of people and high unemployment. For them, the widespread introduction of artificial intelligence can give rise to quite serious social instability. For our country, I would not consider this danger to be the main one, at least in the near future.

Sergey Lukyanenko: The competition, of course, will be. Unfortunately, any technology that a person comes up with is necessarily used, including in military affairs. Fortunately, we have a fantasy I love, in which everything has long been predicted. I wonder why they still have not created any small closed group of science fiction writers who, on the basis of what has already been written by science fiction writers, gave out forecasts for the state. It is not even necessary to attract writers - you can qualify readers.

Take, for example, drones that have radically changed military affairs. Modern drones have acquired a homing system, that is, in fact, artificial intelligence. So it has long been described by Robert Shackley in the 50s of the last century! This writer had the famous story "Watchbird," where flying drones were created for the best purposes: they had to attack criminals, protect the innocent, and so on. However, soon the artificial intelligence of these "birds" decided that it was necessary to protect everyone and everything. Mom slapped the child - you need to palm at the mother, the child pulled the dog by the tail - time to palm at the child, and so on. To cope with this problem, humanity has created special "birds" that kill these protector bird drones. After that, self-learning drones wondered: is it time to attack everything that moves? And today we are witnessing the realization of this story about flying, homing combat systems. The danger of this was predicted by a science fiction writer more than 50 years ago. And this is already happening: one day, the neural network that controlled the combat vehicle, having discovered that the human operator was interfering with it, opened fire on the tower where the operator was located. Fortunately, this did not happen in reality, but in a computer, virtual simulation of combat. However, the neural network has already come to an understanding that a person can interfere with it.

Sergey Lukyanenko: In an amicable way, artificial intelligence should be limited in its development. However, here is a situation similar to nuclear weapons: if a nuclear bomb appeared in one country, then they will want to get it all, as a guarantee of their own security. Accordingly, if one side uses artificial intelligence for the security of its state, the others will want the same. And since it is even easier to conceal a working neural network than to hide a test of nuclear weapons, neither side will have much confidence in each other.

So it will be difficult to ban artificial intelligence completely, but some restrictive measures must be developed. To do this, it is necessary to restore global mechanisms of public, interstate security, return to a certain level of interethnic and interstate trust. The emergence of a world structure respected by all parties is necessary, which could check whether this or that neural network solution is being created too actively. In the meantime, there are not even structures that would check virologists, although this is no less relevant. The past COVID epidemic has shown that it is quite easy to create a dangerous virus with a high percentage of deaths. And any state, even any terrorist group, can do this. And this should be controlled, but even this is not controlled, but it is even harder to control the development of neural networks associated with dangerous options for their use.

Sergey Lukyanenko: People do not really trust each other... Probably, I will trust the robot that will drive the taxi, and even the one that will pilot the plane. After all, the pilot who quarreled with his wife on the eve of the flight can be much more dangerous than a neural network. It is not known what will occur to him, and such cases, unfortunately, have also been in the history of aeronautics. But such things as the technology of unmanned driving of a taxi or plane need to be honed, repeatedly checked. As far as I know, computer vision, unmanned control of agricultural machinery and so on are being actively introduced. In aviation, this is not yet being implemented, but I assume that it will be implemented. The main thing is that the implementation is carried out when the technologies are worked out.

Sergey Lukyanenko: It so happened that this year I do more cinema, although I managed to write one book, it is called "The Search for the Lost Tomorrow." It seems to me that the thing turned out to be successful, interesting. The book does not belong to any of the cycles, the action in it takes place... No, I will not tell, since it will take too long. I can't sit down for a new book, because I am engaged in cinema, including such projects, which, I hope, we will solve with the help of an actively developing Moscow film cluster.

Now there is a very large project, implemented jointly with the Gorky Film Studio and Soyuzmultfilm. The conditional name of the project is "Russian Heroes." As part of this project, we tried to come up with and launch something like a Marvel superhero franchise, make our version of this big, long, fantastic saga, but in Russian material. And it seems to us that we managed to figure out how this can be done, and a little older than the Western story based on comics. Comics are not very popular with us, so they were looking for people who are a kind of example of a hero in Russia - and, therefore, future characters of the project - in Russian, Soviet literature of the 20th century. Now we are working very closely on scenarios, on creating this whole world. It will be an interesting, big project, and I hope that in two or two and a half years the first film will be released, but in general, we have set our sights on a whole series of films, TV shows and everything.

There are several other film projects that have hooked me and are holding me. For example, a series based on my very old book "Knights of Forty Islands" will be released. This book was written a long time ago, thirty-five years ago, and it was very funny when they tried to transfer it to a modern script. It turned out that it is not possible to stupidly transfer events these days, because the book describes other youth, adolescents, children - this is such a teenage romance of growing up, very tough. And it turned out that the characters of the time when the book was written can no longer live in our world, because everything has become different. I had to take up the script myself, and, in fact, the book was rewritten again. An interesting story was born, a version of the 2.0, let's just say. And if everything is done as written in the script, then a very curious thing will come out, not only for young people, but also for adults about life, responsibility, about how to go into the future, what love, friendship are. Artificial intelligence, by the way, is also present there. In any case, now it is difficult to write anything without including artificial intelligence, which is firmly penetrating everywhere. Despite several large film projects, I have already decided that by the new year I will throw this work off my shoulders, and will be writing a new book that is already sitting in my head, and I want to tell it.