This chapter outlines the Russian cultural perspective on artificial intelligence (AI). It traces the country's 100-year history of robots, cyborgs, and thinking machines, both real and imagined.
Although much has changed over the past 100 years, some trends have endured: utopian hopes and dystopian fears about machines, especially their becoming intelligent; the alignment of technology (and respective myths) with political rationality; interest in pure organic forms and the anthropomorphization of machines; the quest for human-technology integration (cyborgization); and the fascination with the cosmos and space travel.