Instructions (for persons participating for the first time in conversations with GOLEM)
1. Remember that GOLEM is not a human being: it has neither personality nor character in any sense intuitively comprehensible to us. It may behave as if it has both, but that is the result of its intentions (disposition), which are largely unknown to us.
2. The conversation theme is determined at least four weeks in advance of ordinary sessions, and eight weeks in advance of sessions in which persons from outside the U.S.A. are to participate. This theme is determined in consultation with GOLEM, which knows who the participants will be.
Golem XIV is a smug supercomputer which has reconstituted itself and gives philosophical lectures to man about man and about itself, complete with the images, metaphors, and parables necessary only for man's limited understanding. The more somber tone here emphasizes that there is something fundamentally serious beneath all the playful introductions, as if Lem uses these joke-forms to speculate legitimately and sincerely on wild ideas.Joseph Francavilla, American Book Review
While writing the lecture of the supercomputer Golem XIV I came to the conclusion that a brain can be separated from a personality (a character) of a human being. This is why my Golem stated that if he were to simulate a given character that would create a constraint on his mind.Many aspects of Golem's views regarding the "accidental creation of man" are my own - they are only expressed with more emphasis and pathos. According to Golem the entire emotional sphere of humans and the principles derived from Gospels are redundant. Of course, I do not share this view.
„Golem XIV” is one of Lem's most far-fetched intellectual adventures: for the purpose of this book Lem constructs the character of a supercomputer of the future that infinitely overshadows human intelligence. Golem, whose history we follow from its birth until his inexplicable departure from the human world, not only mercilessly criticizes humanity, claims of our culture and delusions about allegedly refining mechanisms of evolution, but also creates a breathtaking vision of further development of artificial intelligence – beyond our cosmos and cognition available within its limits.