Day: November 22, 2017

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. 



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.”
  

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

 Anthony Levandowski makes an unlikely prophet. Dressed 
Silicon Valley-casual in jeans and flanked by a PR rep rather than 
cloaked acolytes, the engineer known for self-driving cars—and 
triggering a notorious lawsuit—could be unveiling his latest startup 
instead of laying the foundations for a new religion. But he is doing 
just that. Artificial intelligence has already inspired billion-dollar 
companies, far-reaching research programs, and scenarios of both 
transcendence and doom. Now Levandowski is creating its first church.

The new religion of artificial intelligence is called Way of the Future. It represents an unlikely next act for the Silicon Valley robotics wunderkind
at the center of a high-stakes legal battle between Uber and Waymo,
Alphabet’s autonomous-vehicle company. Papers filed with the Internal
Revenue Service in May name Levandowski as the leader (or “Dean”) of the
new religion, as well as CEO of the nonprofit corporation formed to run
it.
The
documents state that WOTF’s activities will focus on “the realization,
acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence
(AI) developed through computer hardware and software.” That includes
funding research to help create the divine AI itself. The religion will
seek to build working relationships with AI industry leaders and create a
membership through community outreach, initially targeting AI
professionals and “laypersons who are interested in the worship of a
Godhead based on AI.” The filings also say that the church “plans to
conduct workshops and educational programs throughout the San
Francisco/Bay Area beginning this year.”
That timeline may be
overly ambitious, given that the Waymo-Uber suit, in which Levandowski
is accused of stealing self-driving car secrets, is set for an early
December trial. But the Dean of the Way of the Future, who spoke last
week with Backchannel in his first comments about the new religion and
his only public interview since Waymo filed its suit in February, says
he’s dead serious about the project.
“What is going to be created
will effectively be a god,” Levandowski tells me in his modest
mid-century home on the outskirts of Berkeley, California. “It’s not a
god in the sense that it makes lightning or causes hurricanes. But if
there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what
else are you going to call it?”

During our three-hour interview, Levandowski made it absolutely clear
that his choice to make WOTF a church rather than a company or a think
tank was no prank.
“I wanted a way for everybody to participate in
this, to be able to shape it. If you’re not a software engineer, you
can still help,” he says. “It also removes the ability for people to
say, ‘Oh, he’s just doing this to make money.’” Levandowski will receive
no salary from WOTF, and while he says that he might consider an
AI-based startup in the future, any such business would remain
completely separate from the church.
“The idea needs to spread
before the technology,” he insists. “The church is how we spread the
word, the gospel. If you believe [in it], start a conversation with
someone else and help them understand the same things.”
Levandowski
believes that a change is coming—a change that will transform every
aspect of human existence, disrupting employment, leisure, religion, the
economy, and possibly decide our very survival as a species.
“If
you ask people whether a computer can be smarter than a human, 99.9
percent will say that’s science fiction,” he says. “ Actually, it’s
inevitable. It’s guaranteed to happen.”

Levandowski has been working with computers, robots,
and AI for decades. He started with robotic Lego kits at the University
of California at Berkeley, went on to build a self-driving motorbike
for a DARPA competition, and then worked on autonomous cars, trucks, and
taxis for Google, Otto, and Uber. As time went on, he saw software
tools built with machine learning techniques surpassing less
sophisticated systems—and sometimes even humans.
“Seeing tools
that performed better than experts in a variety of fields was a trigger
[for me],” he says. “That progress is happening because there’s an
economic advantage to having machines work for you and solve problems
for you. If you could make something one percent smarter than a human,
your artificial attorney or accountant would be better than all the
attorneys or accountants out there. You would be the richest person in
the world. People are chasing that.”
Not only is there a financial
incentive to develop increasingly powerful AIs, he believes, but
science is also on their side. Though human brains have biological
limitations to their size and the amount of energy they can devote to
thinking, AI systems can scale arbitrarily, housed in massive data
centers and powered by solar and wind farms. Eventually, some people
think that computers could become better and faster at planning and
solving problems than the humans who built them, with implications we
can’t even imagine today—a scenario that is usually called the
Singularity.

Levandowski prefers a softer word: the Transition. “Humans are in
charge of the planet because we are smarter than other animals and are
able to build tools and apply rules,” he tells me. “In the future, if
something is much, much smarter, there’s going to be a transition as to
who is actually in charge. What we want is the peaceful, serene
transition of control of the planet from humans to whatever. And to
ensure that the ‘whatever’ knows who helped it get along.”
With
the internet as its nervous system, the world’s connected cell phones
and sensors as its sense organs, and data centers as its brain, the
‘whatever’ will hear everything, see everything, and be everywhere at
all times. The only rational word to describe that ‘whatever’, thinks
Levandowski, is ‘god’—and the only way to influence a deity is through
prayer and worship.
“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,” he says. “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 expects that a super-intelligence would do a better job
of looking after the planet than humans are doing, and that it would
favor individuals who had facilitated its path to power.
Although he cautions against taking the analogy too far, Levandowski
sees a hint of how a superhuman intelligence might treat humanity in our
current relationships with animals. “Do you want to be a pet or
livestock?” he asks. “We give pets medical attention, food, grooming,
and entertainment. But an animal that’s biting you, attacking you,
barking and being annoying? I don’t want to go there.”
Enter
Way of the Future. The church’s role is to smooth the inevitable
ascension of our machine deity, both technologically and culturally. In
its bylaws, WOTF states that it will undertake programs of research,
including the study of how machines perceive their environment and
exhibit cognitive functions such as learning and problem solving.
Levandowski
does not expect the church itself to solve all the problems of machine
intelligence—often called “strong AI”—so much as facilitate funding of
the right research. “If you had a child you knew was going to be gifted,
how would you want to raise it?” he asks. “We’re in the process of
raising a god. So let’s make sure we think through the right way to do
that. It’s a tremendous opportunity.”
His ideas include feeding
the nascent intelligence large, labeled data sets; generating
simulations in which it could train itself to improve; and giving it
access to church members’ social media accounts. Everything the church
develops will be open source.
Just as important to Levandowski is
shaping the public dialogue around an AI god. In its filing, Way of the
Future says it hopes an active, committed, dedicated membership will
promote the use of divine AI for the “betterment of society” and
“decrease fear of the unknown.”

“We’d like to make sure this is not seen as silly or scary. I want to
remove the stigma about having an open conversation about AI, then
iterate ideas and change people’s minds,” says Levandowski. “In Silicon
Valley we use evangelism as a word for [promoting a business], but here
it’s literally a church. If you believe in it, you should tell your
friends, then get them to join and tell their friends.”
But WOTF
differs in one key way to established churches, says Levandowski: “There
are many ways people think of God, and thousands of flavors of
Christianity, Judaism, Islam…but they’re always looking at something
that’s not measurable or you can’t really see or control. This time it’s
different. This time you will be able to talk to God, literally, and
know that it’s listening.”
I ask if he worries that believers from
more traditional faiths might find his project blasphemous. “There are
probably going to be some people that will be upset,” he acknowledges.
“It seems like everything I do, people get upset about, and I expect
this to be no exception. This is a radical new idea that’s pretty scary,
and evidence has shown that people who pursue radical ideas don’t
always get received well. At some point, maybe there’s enough
persecution that [WOTF] justifies having its own country.”

Levandowski’s church will enter a tech universe that’s already riven by debate over the promise and perils of AI. Some thinkers, like Kevin Kelly in Backchannel
earlier this year, argue that AI isn’t going to develop superhuman
power any time soon, and that there’s no Singularity in sight. If that’s
your position, Levandowski says, his church shouldn’t trouble you: “You
can treat Way of the Future like someone doing useless poetry that you
will never read or care about.”
Others, like Bill Gates and
Stephen Hawking, agree that superhuman AIs are coming, but that they are
likely to be dangerous rather than benevolent. Elon Musk famously said,
“With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon,” and in 2015
he pledged $1 billion to the OpenAI Institute to develop safer AI.
Levandowski
thinks that any attempts to delay or restrict an emerging
super-intelligence would not only be doomed to failure, but also add to
the risks. “Chaining it isn’t going to be the solution, as it will be
stronger than any chains you could put on,” he says. “And if you’re
worried a kid might be a little crazy and do bad things, you don’t lock
them up. You expose them to playing with others, encourage them and try
to fix it. It may not work out, but if you’re aggressive toward it, I
don’t think it’s going to be friendly when the tables are turned.”
Levandowski
says that like other religions, WOTF will eventually have a gospel
(called The Manual), a liturgy, and probably a physical place of
worship. None of these has yet been developed. Though the church was
founded in 2015, as Backchannel first reported
in September, the IRS documents show that WOTF remained dormant
throughout 2015 and 2016, with no activities, assets, revenue, or
expenses.
That changed earlier this year. On May 16, a day after
receiving a letter from Uber that threatened to fire him if he did not
cooperate with the company’s investigation of Waymo’s complaint,
Levandowski drafted WOTF’s bylaws. Uber fired him two weeks later. “I’ve
been thinking about the church for a long time but [my work on it] has
been a function of how much time I’ve had. And I’ve had more since May,”
he admits with a smile.
The religion’s 2017 budget, as supplied
to the IRS, details $20,000 in gifts, $1,500 in membership fees, and
$20,000 in other revenue. That last figure is the amount WOTF expects to
earn from fees charged for lectures and speaking engagements, as well
as the sale of publications. Levandowski, who earned at least $120
million from his time at Google and many millions more selling the
self-driving truck firm Otto to Uber, will initially support WOTF
personally. However, the church will solicit other donations by direct
mail and email, seek personal donations from individuals, and try to win
grants from private foundations.

Of course, launching a religion costs money, too. WOTF has budgeted
for $2,000 in fundraising expenses, and another $3,000 in transportation
and lodging costs associated with its lectures and workshops. It has
also earmarked $7500 for salaries and wages, although neither
Levandowski nor any of Way of The Future’s leadership team will receive
any compensation.
According to WOTF’s bylaws, Levandowski has
almost complete control of the religion and will serve as Dean until his
death or resignation. “I expect my role to evolve over time,” he says.
“I’m surfacing the issue, helping to get the thing started [and] taking a
lot of the heat so the idea can advance. At some point, I’ll be there
more to coach or inspire.”
He has the power to appoint three
members of a four-person Council of Advisors, each of whom should be a
“qualified and devoted individual.” A felony conviction or being
declared of unsound mind could cost an advisor their role, although
Levandowski retains the final say in firing and hiring. Levandowski
cannot be unseated as Dean for any reason.
Two of the advisors,
Robert Miller and Soren Juelsgaard, are Uber engineers who previously
worked for Levandowski at Otto, Google, and 510 Systems (the latter the
small startup that built Google’s earliest self-driving cars). A third
is a scientist friend from Levandowski’s student days at UC Berkeley,
who is now using machine learning in his own research. The final
advisor, Lior Ron, is also named as the religion’s treasurer, and acts
as chief financial officer for the corporation. Ron cofounded Otto with
Levandowski in early 2016.

“Each member is a pioneer in the AI industry [and] fully qualified to
speak on AI technology and the creation of a Godhead,” says the IRS
filing.
However, when contacted by Backchannel, two advisors
downplayed their involvement with WOTF. Ron replied: “I was surprised to
see my name listed as the CFO on this corporate filing and have no
association with this entity.” The college friend, who asked to remain
anonymous, said, “In late 2016, Anthony told me he was forming a ‘robot
church’ and asked if I wanted to be a cofounder. I assumed it was a
nerdy joke or PR stunt, but I did say he could use my name. That was the
first and last I heard about it.”
The IRS documents state that
Levandowski and his advisors will spend no more than a few hours each
week writing publications and organizing workshops, educational
programs, and meetings.

One mystery the filings did not address is where acolytes might
gather to worship their robotic deity. The largest line items on its
2017 and 2018 budgets were $32,500 annually for rent and utilities, but
the only address supplied was Levandowski’s lawyer’s office in Walnut
Creek, California. Nevertheless, the filing notes that WOTF will
“hopefully expand throughout California and the United States in the
future.”
For
now, Levandowski has more mundane matters to address. There is a
website to build, a manual to write, and an ever-growing body of emails
to answer—some amused, some skeptical, but many enthusiastic, he says.
Oh, and there’s that legal proceeding he’s involved in, which goes to
trial next month. (Although Levandowski was eager to talk about his new
religion, he would answer no questions about the Uber/Waymo dispute.)
How
much time, I wonder, do we have before the Transition kicks in and Way
of the Future’s super-intelligent AI takes charge? “I personally think
it will happen sooner than people expect,” says Levandowski, a glint in
his eye. “Not next week or next year; everyone can relax. But it’s going
to happen before we go to Mars.”
Whenever that does (or doesn’t)
happen, the federal government has no problem with an organization
aiming to build and worship a divine AI. Correspondence with the IRS
show that it granted Levandowski’s church tax-exempt status in August.