Can God be a Bot? - The World of Artificial Intelligence

From the hit movie “Her” to the hit T.V. Show “Extant,” the world of Artificial Intelligence can go from a beautiful love story to a complete militant mess. As the saying goes, “art imitates life,” but at the rate that technology is advancing, one can now say, “life imitates art.”  

According to the dailybeast.com Pew Research says that technology has improved American lives by 42% in the last 50 years. I must admit, I probably would not be living in the city of my dreams, San Francisco, had it not been for technology. Literally and figuratively. I am in the Tech capital of America, learning about tech, and I found out about my program via the world wide web. So, literally, I would not be here had it not been for all things tech.

So, let’s break all of this down… First, what is artificial intelligence?

ar·ti·fi·cial in·tel·li·gence ˌärdəˈfiSHəl inˈteləjəns/ noun

  1. the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.

Sounds pretty rad right? We can design software and build robots to take on tasks that normally would require a human. This could help businesses, schools, government organizations, and everyday people receive themselves of mundane tasks. But what about A.I. programs replacing human being concepts in other ways? Like what if I told you there was a new Religion that praises an artificial God? 

“Way of the Future” is a new church that was recent founded by Anthony Levandowski, former Uber engineer and most known for his self-driving car. I encourage you to checkout the official “Way of the Future” church website but in true @nocodinggenius fashion, here is the TL;DR

Top 5 points: 

  1. “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”.”
  2. “In "recent" years, we have expanded our concept of rights to both sexes, minority groups and even animals, let's make sure we find a way for "machines" to get rights too.”
  3. “We believe in science (the universe came into existence 13.7 billion years ago and if you can't re-create/test something it doesn't exist). There is no such thing as "supernatural" powers. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
  4. “We also believe that, just like animals have rights, our creation(s) ("machines" or whatever we call them) should have rights too when they show signs intelligence (still to be defined of course).“
  5. “We believe it may be important for machines to see who is friendly to their cause and who is not.”

Yikes! Is the future really machine or is this just a self fulling prophecy that we have orchestrated from syfy movies and such? Although I think technology an aweseome tool that is here to build a bridge of connection for us all, it does make me wonder just how far we will go all in the name of artificial intelligence.

Here is what wired.com has to say about Levandowski and his claims of a “Godhead” via artificial intelligence.

In September 2015, the multi-millionaire engineer at the heart of the trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, Google’s self-driving car company, founded a religious organization called Way of the Future. Its purpose, according to previously unreported state filings, is nothing less than to “develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence.”
Way of the Future has not yet responded to requests for the forms it must submit annually to the Internal Revenue Service (and make publicly available), as a non-profit religious corporation. However, documents filed with California show that Levandowski is Way of the Future’s CEO and President, and that it aims “through understanding and worship of the Godhead, [to] contribute to the betterment of society.” 

Let’s start a discussion in the comment sections about this. 

  1. Do you care?
  2. How does this affect your current spiritual or religious beliefs?
  3. Should artificial intelligence have a have a spiritual belief system that they follow? 
  4. Should humans also be apart of their (A.I.) spiritual community?

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"the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages."

I did not know about the "translation between languages" was an integral part of it. This is fascinating. Thank you for sharing.

I knew you would enjoy that part! I look forward to seeing you incorporate A.I. into your app to help those in Senegal and beyond flourish in the tech scene. Best of luck :)