An ex-Google engineer is starting a new “religion” — or cult, or whatever. You in? Besides co-founding Google’s self-driving car program, Anthony Levandowski has founded the Church of Artificial Intelligence. Or re-founded. The tech entrepreneur established Way of the Future in 2015, but had to shut the congregation down a few years later.

Levandowski wants to build a spiritual connection between humans and AI. Despite being kept under the radar for two years, the church amassed 2k followers primed to worship a “Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence developed through computer hardware and software.”

This isn’t the first time people have tried to integrate religion and AI. Earlier this year, ChatGPT delivered a 40-minute sermon to 300 people at the St. Paul church in Germany. Some tech hubs expressed surprise that the AI platform didn’t fabricate a Bible passage for its homily.

AI is notorious for its errors, biases, and sometimes outright manufacture of information.But Levandowski believes that it could help guide humans morally, ethically, and existentially.

AI’s omnipresence plays a big role in the AI preacher’s pitch. “AI can see everything, be everywhere, and know everything,” he states in Bloomberg’s AI IRL podcast, the same characteristics he says people attribute to God.

The church was established before the viral rise of generative AI in an inspired exercise of foresight. “The idea needs to spread before the technology,” Levandowski told Wired in 2017. “The church is how we spread the word.”

Why worship it instead of study it? Levandowski hopes to be in its good graces. He believes that as it gains sentience, the way it evolves will no longer be up to us.

All we can do, he believes, is make ourselves endearing creatures that the AI would want to take care of — like a cat? — and the only way to do so is through prayer and worship. “We would want this intelligence to say, ‘Humans should still have rights, even though I’m in charge.’”

BY THE WAY- Among the AI cleric’s other achievements is receiving a pardon by the outgoing US president at the time, Donald Trump, after pleading guilty to stealing trade secrets in 2021.

Meta’s spokesman, Andy Stone, has been added to Russia’s wanted listfollowing Russian authorities’ classification of Meta as a “terrorist and extremist” organization in October, potentially exposing Russian residents using Meta’s platforms to criminal proceedings, according to the Associated Press. Stone was originally added to the wanted list in February 2022, but no official statements were made at the time, and the news only surfaced recently, independent Russian news website Mediazona said.

We may know why: Our hunch tells us that it is because of Stone’s announcement in March 2022 stating that there would be temporary changes concerning the company’s hate speech policy. This amendment allows users in certain countries to make posts on Facebook and Instagram that incite violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to Reuters.

Details regarding Stone’s case are scarce, anyway, with the Russian interior ministry’s database only noting that he is wanted on criminal charges.

Meta has not yet provided a comment on the matter, according to Mediazona.

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