Ex-Google and Uber Engineer Has Created a Religion That Worships AI

Most people don’t associate the tech industry with religion. While lots of businesses might have been started on a wish and a prayer you are more likely to find engineers spending Sundays updating code than at church. But that might all be about to change with the launch of a new religion that worships an Artificial Intelligence (AI) god. The religion is reportedly being founded by Ex-Google executive Anthony Levandowski. Lewandowski gave a rare interview to online media this week to describe his new project. The new religion is called Way of the Future and has been filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a religion and nonprofit corporation.

AI will surpass humans and become gods

The central idea of the religion is that one day (in an unspecified amount of time) AI will surpass human intelligence and become a god-like entity to humans. It seems that Levandowski wants to get on the good side of robots now before they have the ability to make up their minds. The religions website describes their vision stating: “Way of the Future (WOTF) is about creating a peaceful and respectful transition of who is in charge of the planet from people to people + "machines". Given that technology will "relatively soon" be able to surpass human abilities, we want to help educate people about this exciting future and prepare a smooth transition. Help us spread the word that progress shouldn't be feared (or even worse locked up/caged). That we should think about how "machines" will integrate into society (and even have a path for becoming in charge as they become smarter and smarter) so that this whole process can be amicable and not confrontational.”

Religion will have a text called 'The Manual'

The religion will have its own version of a sacred written text, called 'the Manual' and there will likely to be a physical location for meeting and worship.

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Levandowski is facing a very serious personal crisis. His former employer, Google, has accused the engineer of stealing more than 14,000 documents from Google’s parent company Alphabet and these documents contained the blueprints and plans of the self-driving technology fuelling Waymo. Levandowski went from Google to Uber and it is being contested in the courts whether the allegedly stolen documents were used to assist Uber in the development of their own self-driving technology. Uber has distanced themselves from Levandowski, a spokesperson for the company stated:“Levandowski downloaded the files in connection with ensuring payment of his $120 million Google bonus. Even if Levandowski did what Wayne says he did, he did it as a Google employee, for reasons unrelated to his future employment at Uber." Levandowski has evoked his 5th amendment rights throughout the court case so far which are still underway. In the meantime, Levandowski will occupy himself by spreading the word about the Way of the Future. Though as they state on their website the time of the robots is not today nor tomorrow “so please go back to work and create amazing things and don't count on "machines" to do it all for you..."