The word of God: how AI is deified in the age of secularism

At the tail end of 2017, a feature in Wired offered a glimpse into a new "church of artificial intelligence," set up by Silicon Valley engineer and expert in self-driving car technology, Anthony Levandowski. The aim of Levandowski's church -- called the Way of the Future -- is described in papers filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as "the realization, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed through computer hardware and software." "It's not a god in the sense that it makes lightning or causes hurricanes," Levandowski told Wired. "But if there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what else are you going to call it?" These words, as wobbly as they are, are painted against a backdrop of high-profile advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning.