The author considers three generations of foresight to identify the vector and the logic of its development in order to build theoretical foundation and methodology of foresight in a knowledge-based economy. The article reveals that as the new economy comes into being and develops, a shift from the paradigm of linearity to complexity paradigm, from considering an object under research as a closed and static system to adaptive, dynamic, open, self-organizing systems of a new complexity level, developing in a globalizing economy, in rapidly changing environments with high level of uncertainty, occurs. Theoretical basis should be the theory of evolution, complexity and chaos.

The possibility of artificial intelligence was originally associated (von Neumann) with the problem of overcoming some hypothetical complexity threshold. Currently, the formation of a modern complexity paradigm in the context of philosophical ideas of E. Morin , G. Deleuze and F. Guattari , second-order cybernetics of Heinz von Foerster, autopoiesis of F. Varela and F. Maturana, cibersemiotics and recursive logic of “laws of form” by J. Spencer Brown causes the necessity of constructive introducing the concept of complexity observer as a self-organizing ensemble of cognitive agents; the artificial intelligence and artificial consciousness will probably become an emergent product of their interaction.