Ex-Google executive Anthony Levandowski is founding a church where people worship an artificial intelligence god

Kif Leswing

Anthony Levandowski, the former Google and Uber executive currently at the center of a bombshell lawsuit filed by Waymo, says he's serious about starting a religion centered around super-smart artificial intelligence.

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In a rare interview with Wired, his first public interview since the Waymo lawsuit, Levandowski shed more light on his new church, "Way of the Future." Here are some highlights:

  • The "Way of the Future" church will have its own gospel called "The Manual," public worship ceremonies, and probably a physical place of worship.

  • The idea behind his religion is that one day — "not next week or next year" — sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence will be smarter than humans, and will effectively become a god.

  • "Part of it being smarter than us means it will decide how it evolves, but at least we can decide how we act around it," Levandowski told Wired. "I would love for the machine to see us as its beloved elders that it respects and takes care of. We would want this intelligence to say, 'Humans should still have rights, even though I’m in charge.'"

  • Levandowski is not the only tech luminary to worry about an super-intelligent AI, which others refer to as "strong AI" or the Singularity, although he prefers the term "Transition."

Levandowski is currently at the center of a major lawsuit. His former employer, Google, alleges that he helped Uber steal intellectual property about self-driving car technology. Levandowski's startup, Otto, was sold to Uber for $680 million in 2016.

The entire interview is worth reading at Wired.

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