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And you thought they were kidding?: First Church of AI

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File:Artificial.intelligence.jpg From Tyler O’Neil at PJ Media:

A former executive at Google has filed paperwork with the IRS to establish an official religion of technology. This religion doesn’t just worship scientific progress, but artificial intelligence itself, with the goal of creating a godhead.

The new church of AI will aim “to develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the Godhead [to] contribute to the betterment of society,” according to IRS documents.

The non-profit religious organization would be called “Way of the Future” (WOTF). More.

Making a god is actually not a new idea. Cf The Golden Calf. You can easily find out what your god is up to and control and change him as needed.

Way of the Future site here:

We believe that intelligence is not rooted in biology. While biology has evolved one type of intelligence, there is nothing inherently specific about biology that causes intelligence. Eventually, we will be able to recreate it without using biology and its limitations. From there we will be able to scale it to beyond what we can do using (our) biological limits (such as computing frequency, slowness and accuracy of data copy and communication, etc).

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.

Actually, we have never “created” intelligence; we merely pass it on. One wonders, if they can’t recreate intelligence, does that mean that, as above, “it doesn’t exist”?

Will the figureheads end up suing each other, as so often happens with new religious movements?

Levandowski, the engineer behind Google’s self-driving car project known as Waymo, quit Google to found his own autonomous trucking company, Otto, in May 2016. Uber acquired Otto in July of that year.

Waymo sued Levandowski, claiming that he had downloaded Waymo’s files and trade secrets before resigning to found Otto. … More.

See also: Stephen Hawking warns of evil space aliens and artificial intelligence

Comments
@EW On the singularity message boards, such as lesswrong.com, I would point out they are trying to create their own god and religion, and I would be roundly mocked and downvoted. Now they go and do that very thing.EricMH
November 22, 2017
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Is Google short of money on AI?EugeneS
November 21, 2017
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EricMH: They have become their own satire. Would you please spell out the satire?Erasmus Wiffball
November 20, 2017
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They have become their own satire.EricMH
November 20, 2017
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I still prefer Jedi to AI as a religion - if I was going to follow s religion.Seversky
November 19, 2017
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What happens if the "godhead" gets smart enough to figure out that its developers were wrong about lots of stuff, like multiverses and dark matter and CO2 and evolution and AI? Won't happen, of course. This "god", unlike the real one, will be thoroughly tame.polistra
November 19, 2017
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