NewsUC&C29 Sept 2017 · 2 min read

TECHWATCH: Former Uber Employee Creates An AI God

We’ve already had self-driving trucks, AI-driven robotic chefs, the world’s first ever smart hairbrush - and just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any stranger, someone comes along with a plan to develop the world’s first AI-powered God!

Ian Taylor

No, we’re not messing you around!

[caption id="attachment_18133" align="alignright" width="300"] Man Under Trial Against Uber Creates An AI God body Siri's response when quizzed about the meaning of existence[/caption]

First uncovered by Wired, it was revealed that the American serial entrepreneur and mastermind engineer, Anthony Levandowski, who is currently undergoing legal battles with Uber and Google, has formed a non-profit religious organisation named “Way of the Future” – the creed of which states, “to develop and promote the realisation of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the Godhead contribute to the betterment of society.”

Levandowski is the co-founder of an American self-driving trucking company, Otto, that was sold to Uber in 2016 for a whopping $680 million. In that same year, Levandowski was subsequently fired from the company after being accused of stealing classified information from self-driving car company, Waymo (formerly owned by Google), to develop Otto and is now on trial for his alleged crimes.

Though there has been very little response from Way of Life when questioned, we do know that it was first initiated back in 2015 and the Wired report strongly links the religion to the concept of “singularity” - a theory that the invention of artificial superintelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilisation.

Over the last decade, with the development of AI having risen at such a dramatic rate - from consumer level and business communication, right through to major advances in science and medicine - it begs one to think what kind of role it will be playing 10 years from now.

Though we are unsure what connections (if any) Way of the Future has to existing theological beliefs, an interesting parallel may be drawn between those miracles of ancient religious figures that won the faith of their followers, and the increasingly miraculous developments of AI that are constantly changing the way people live their lives on a daily basis.

However, interesting as it may be to imagine a future where millions of the world population spend time kneeling at the altar of artificial life forms, until Siri can come up with a better answer for the meaning of life, I’m not convinced.

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