Former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski, who was found guilty of stealing trade secrets for self-driving cars, is dissolving his church Way of the Future, which focuses on artificial intelligence. The church’s mission to pursue “the realization, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence (AI)” in anticipation of the Singularity comes to an unfavorable conclusion. Without the direction of religion, humanity will now have to contend with rogue AI. levandowski education fundkorosectechcrunch aifocused way the.
WOTF’s closure was begun by Levandowski in June 2020, according to paperwork submitted to the state of California. Regular gatherings and an entire church edifice were never a part of WOTF. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has received donations from the church totaling $175,172.
The Verge has covered the bigger Levandowski story as part of the legal battle between Uber and Google’s Waymo, which is only one aspect of the man’s ownership and management of an AI church. Levandowski founded his self-driving trucking firm, Otto, which he eventually sold to Uber after working on autonomous cars at Google. Levandowski stole certain internal Google papers during the transition from Google to Uber, which caused Google to sue Uber in 2017 and reach a settlement in 2018. In 2020, Levandowski was found guilty of stealing trade secrets.
Levandowski was given a shorter jail term of 18 months to serve after the outbreak, but former President Donald Trump commuted that sentence before taking office. Levandowski appears to be able to wait for AI to overcome humans in relative tranquility now that Way of the Future is history. He is not serving a prison sentence andis in charge of another autonomous driving start-up.
Levandowski said that long before the donation, he had been thinking of shutting the church. Levandowski’s decision was prompted by the Black Lives Matter movement, which grew in popularity during the summer after George Floyd passed away while being held by the police. He said now was the ideal moment to invest the money in a project that would be immediately beneficial. Much like Levandowski, Way of the Future aroused attention and controversies as soon as it was made public in a November 2017 Wired piece. The founding of the church and its goals weren’t the only things that raised eyebrows in Silicon Valley and the larger IT sector.
