wired | The new religion of artificial intelligence is called Way of the Future. It represents an unlikely next act for the Silicon Valley robotics wunderkind
at the center of a high-stakes legal battle between Uber and Waymo,
Alphabet’s autonomous-vehicle company. Papers filed with the Internal
Revenue Service in May name Levandowski as the leader (or “Dean”) of the
new religion, as well as CEO of the nonprofit corporation formed to run
it.
The documents state that WOTF’s activities will focus on “the
realization, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on Artificial
Intelligence (AI) developed through computer hardware and software.”
That includes funding research to help create the divine AI itself. The
religion will seek to build working relationships with AI industry
leaders and create a membership through community outreach, initially
targeting AI professionals and “laypersons who are interested in the
worship of a Godhead based on AI.” The filings also say that the church
“plans to conduct workshops and educational programs throughout the San
Francisco/Bay Area beginning this year.”
That timeline may be
overly ambitious, given that the Waymo-Uber suit, in which Levandowski
is accused of stealing self-driving car secrets, is set for an early
December trial. But the Dean of the Way of the Future, who spoke last
week with Backchannel in his first comments about the new religion and
his only public interview since Waymo filed its suit in February, says
he’s dead serious about the project.
“What is going to be created
will effectively be a god,” Levandowski tells me in his modest
mid-century home on the outskirts of Berkeley, California. “It’s not a
god in the sense that it makes lightning or causes hurricanes. But if
there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what
else are you going to call it?”
During our three-hour interview, Levandowski made it absolutely clear
that his choice to make WOTF a church rather than a company or a think
tank was no prank.
“I wanted a way for everybody to participate in
this, to be able to shape it. If you’re not a software engineer, you
can still help,” he says. “It also removes the ability for people to
say, ‘Oh, he’s just doing this to make money.’” Levandowski will receive
no salary from WOTF, and while he says that he might consider an
AI-based startup in the future, any such business would remain
completely separate from the church.
“The idea needs to spread
before the technology,” he insists. “The church is how we spread the
word, the gospel. If you believe [in it], start a conversation with
someone else and help them understand the same things.”
Levandowski
believes that a change is coming—a change that will transform every
aspect of human existence, disrupting employment, leisure, religion, the
economy, and possibly decide our very survival as a species.
“If
you ask people whether a computer can be smarter than a human, 99.9
percent will say that’s science fiction,” he says. “ Actually, it’s
inevitable. It’s guaranteed to happen.”
