In the article, “Inside the First Church of Artificial Intelligence,” Mark Harris interviews Anthony Levandowski about becoming the Dean (a title which is equal to titles such as Deacon or Priest) of his new religion of artificial intelligence called Way of the Future. Levandowski will serve as the Dean until his death or resignation, since he cannot be removed for any reason. He states, “The church is how we spread the word, the gospel….” Levandowski is definitely qualified to lead this new faith since he has worked with AI, computers, and robots for decades. He branched off into software engineering to design autonomous vehicles for companies such as Google, Otto, and Uber. He believes a system of super-intelligent machines will look after the planet sometime soon with more efficiency than humans. But, of course, someone must build this god, so it can begin its dominion. Levandowski mentions this AI god will be constructed by “feeding [it] large, labeled data sets; generating simulations in which it could train itself to improve; and giving it access to church members’ social media accounts.” Eventually Levandowski will write The Manual, which will be the official gospel of his church[1]. The Way of the Future states that it “promote[s] the use of divine AI for the ‘betterment of society’ and to ‘decrease fear of the unknown.’’’ As strange as this new religion may sound, it is not any different than some of the faiths we have on record, nor is it implausible to consider machines overtaking humans as the dominant lifeform on earth.
According to adherents.com, a website dedicated to providing information on the religions of planet Earth, there are over 4,200 religions (and counting). Scrolling through their lengthy list, I noticed the major religions of the world including their splinter groups, folk religions, and the non-religions such as agnostics and atheists. So here comes Anthony Levandowski with a revolutionary new idea, a religion devoted to the worship of a hand-built god. I am trying to determine if Levandowski will use his newfound faith as a tax write-off, or if he is trying to hedge his bets so that he and his parishioners will not be enslaved when the machines take over the planet. Levandowski asks the question: “Do you want to be a pet or livestock?” My answer is neither, but he prophesizes that technology will become self-aware, therefore overtaking humans as the dominant species.
This shift in planetary dominance is not too farfetched. According to Moore’s Law, named after Gordon Moore the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Intel Corporation, the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years. This means that the processing power significantly speeds up as well. The point that personal computers will equal and/or surpass the processing power of the human brain is estimated to be somewhere around the year 2020-2025. The brain has the processing power around 100 teraflops, roughly 100 trillion calculations per second, according to Hans Morvec, principal research scientist at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University (Delio). Ray Kurzweil, a computer scientist and inventor, states in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, “Over the next several decades, machine competence will rival—and ultimately surpass—any particular human skill one cares to cite, including our marvelous ability to place our ideas in a broad diversity of contexts” (16). He also discusses that one day computers will be able to pass the Turing Test. Alan Turing, described as the father of artificial intelligence, proposed a test to give to a human and a machine. This test would be presided over by an evaluator separated from the two participants. An evaluator asks a group of questions to both the machine and the human. If the evaluator cannot determine which of the two participants answered the question, then the machine has achieved human capabilities. Kurzweil states, “This is a phenomenon that Turing had predicted: that machine intelligence would become so pervasive, so comfortable, and so well integrated into our information-based economy that people would fail even to notice it” (59). Much of our society’s needs and wants such as food, water, global positioning, telecommunications, banking, etc. are already disseminated and monitored by machines. This answers the question: How can machines enslave us when we can simply turn them off? I will answer that question with a question: Who would turn off the machines? The world-famous Luddite super-villain Ted Kaczynski, dubbed the Unabomber by the FBI, mentions in his manifesto entitled, Industrial Society and Its Future:
The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained. If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave … It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines … What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ [sic] decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decision[s] for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better result[s] than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage, the machines will be in effective control. (40)
Dean Levandowski (I wish he would change his title to Supreme Dean) also prophesizes about the upcoming Singularity, or as he has reworded, the Transition. The Singularity as defined by Kurzweil, and other futurists, is a point where artificial intelligence will equal and surpass human intelligence, and gain the ability to learn and progress without the aid of humans. The Singularity is a borrowed physics term to describe “an event horizon hard to see beyond” (Big Think). As Patrick Tucker, assistant editor of The Futurist, describes the Singularity, “It will come about as the result of an explosion in our technological abilities. We will incorporate more computer-based processes into our biological functioning until we transcend our crude, earthly bodies entirely and become machine-based, virtually immortal.” Kurzweil mentions, “The only way for the species to keep pace will be for humans to gain greater competence from the computational technology we have created, that is, for the species to merge with its technology” (130). This is no longer science fiction. It has already begun decades ago.
There are several examples of humans merging with machines. A rudimentary machine that we have already incorporated into our lives are prosthetic limbs. Also consider pacemakers, and now we have the option to get RFID chips implanted into our bodies. As mentioned in an article by The New York Times, these RFID chips can serve as currency in the office cafeteria, or act as a badge to enter the building (Astor). For people who want to lose weight with greater ease, a small device can be placed under the skin. It delivers electrical pulses to throttle the Vagus nerve to regulate hunger cravings (“VBLOC Therapy”). Another apparatus that people can place in their body is an RNS neuro-stimulator. This is a mini-machine attached to the skull with the purpose of sending electrical impulses into the brain to stop epilepsy (Fauber). Michael Crichton wrote about a similar process in his 1972 book The Terminal Man. This, more machine than man, scenario will encompass all of us sooner than some would like to think. Will this mean the extinction of humankind? Some want to say, “Yes!” As we have seen throughout history, humanity is all about delving into science that puts them closer to extinction. But this could simply be like any other invention, or progressive aspect of civilization, we learn to understand and adjust to the new insights? And as for the aspect of a manufactured god, I will leave you with the words of Isaiah:
He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!” (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, Isaiah 44:14-17).
[1] One point not expounded on by Mark Harris, will there be any excommunication for breaking a rule as mentioned in The Manual? What if someone sleeps with someone else’s motherboard?
Works Cited:
Astor, Maggie. “Microchip Implants for Employees? One Company Says Yes.” The New
York Times, 25 July 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/technology/ microchips-wisconsin-company-employees.html/.
Big Think, “Ray Kurzweil: The Upcoming Singularity.” YouTube, 28 Apr. 2009,
https://youtu.be/ 1uIzS1uCOcE/.
Delio, Michelle. “This is Your Computer on Brains.” Wired, 19 Nov. 2002,
https://www.wired.com/2002/11/this-is-your-computer-on-brains/.
Fauber, John. “Wired for Life: Device Short Circuits Seizures.” MedPage Today, 7 Feb.
2016, https://www.medpagetoday.com/neurology/seizures/56056/.
Harris, Mark. “Inside the First Church of Artificial Intelligence.” Wired, 15 Nov. 2017,
https://www.wired.com/story/anthony-levandowski-artificial-intelligence-religion/.
Kaczynski, Theodore. Industrial Society and Its Future. Edited by Green Anarchist, The
Washington Post, 1995.
Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines. Viking Penguin, 1999.
The Holy Bible. English Standard Version, Good News Publishers, 2001.
Tucker, Patrick. “The Singularity and Human Destiny.” The Futurist, March-April, 2006,
http://www.singularity.com/KurzweilFuturist.pdf/.
“VBLOC Vagal Blocking Therapy.” Winthrop Surgical Associates, 2017,
http://www.winthropbariatrics.com/bariatric-surgery/vbloc-therapy-2.php/.
Author Bio: Nick Romeo is a multidisciplinary artist, musician and writer. Nick lives in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania with his wife and cat named Megatron.
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