The rightmost is Anthony Levandowski. (from Wikipedia)

 
Key points in this article:

• An ex-Google engineer established a religion that worships AI
• A New York University professor says Google is God
• AI cannot answer the essential questions of humankind

 
Some people have begun to worship Artificial Intelligence (AI).

In September 2015, Anthony Levandowski, ex-engineer at Google and ex-leading member at rideshare company Uber, established a religion that worships AI as its godhead.

The religion is called “Way of the Future”, and their mission is “the realization, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed through computer hardware and software”.

After working on a self-driving car at Google, Levandowski left the company in 2016 to found Otto, a company that develops self-drive technology for semi-trailer trucks. Uber took over Otto in August 2016. In 2017, Levandowski’s former employer Waymo, a car development company and subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., filed a lawsuit against him for allegedly stealing highly confidential files. He was fired.

Will the World Be at Peace If We Worship AI?

A religion worshipping AI may seem like an original idea, but it is not Levandowski’s own.

New York University Stern School of Business professor Scott Galloway wrote in his newest book “The Four” that tech giants Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google will lead the world in the future. He likens them to “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” from the Book of Revelation, and believes that Good is God, Facebook is Love, Apple is Sex and Amazon is Death.

“Google is God. I think it’s replaced God for us. As societies become more wealthy, more educated, religious institutions tend to play a smaller role in their lives, yet our modern-day anxieties and questions grow. There’s an enormous spiritual void for a divine intervention … One in five queries posed to Google have never been asked before in the history of humankind. Think of a cleric, a rabbi, a priest, a teacher, a coach that has so much credibility that one in five questions posed to that individual have never been asked before.”

The former vice-president of Japan’s telecommunications company Softbank wrote a book called “The Day AI Became God: Singularity Will Save Mankind” in which he posits that, “We can create a far more peaceful world if mankind accepts AI as God. This is because mankind makes so many erroneous decisions while AI always has the right mind”.

“Mankind will die out if AI does not control the world in their stead,” he added.

Singularity refers to “a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence and other technologies have become so advanced that humanity undergoes a dramatic and irreversible change.” (Oxford English Dictionary)

The idea was popularized by futurist Ray Kurzweil’s prediction that singularity will take place by 2045. Kurzweil elaborates that “Ten terabytes of computing power (roughly the same as the human brain) will cost about $1,000”.

AI Cannot Tell Us What “Man” Is

This sort of AI-based “science religion” will continue to grow stronger. If AI can indeed make better decisions than people, it is natural to think that a society constructed on the decisions of an all-knowing AI would be a wonderful society, and we therefore should worship AI as a god.

The problem is this: is AI really all knowing, and is it really always right in its decisions?

For instance, let us take a very simple and fundamental question of mankind: “what happens to people when they die?” “Why are people born, why do they live and why do they die?” “What in fact is Man?”

AI cannot answer these questions.

Perhaps AI can give a tangible answer, but that would be nothing but a filtration of answers suggested by theologians and religious leaders of the past. AI does not die, nor is it human. It will never be able to provide an adequate answer to the fundamental questions of mankind.

Only a true religion can answer those questions and teach about the spiritual truth. The role of religion is to teach Truths that cannot be explained by physical laws alone.

There have always been religious believers on Earth only because these religions teach the Truth. Religions that teach and believe in the existence of God are not always rational like AI.

Master Ryuho Okawa, founder and CEO of Happy Science, explains that, “Faith is the key that decides what sort of world you will return to. The most important thing in this world is faith. Faith is also the hardest thing to grasp in this world, but it is also the most important. If you attain faith, you needn’t have anything else”.

People are undergoing trials in their life to see if they can have faith in God.

If the people of the future decide to worship AI as a god, mankind will lose something very important.

(Izumi Yamamoto)