Ruminations

The Profane Becoming Sacred

Your new god? Getty Images

"We demand deliverance ... Artificial Intelligence advocates wax eloquent about the possibilities of machine-based immortality and resurrection, and their disciples, the architects of virtual reality and cyberspace, exult in their expectation of God-like omnipresence and disembodied perfection."
David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention

"[He spoke with enthusiasm about] robots taking over the world ... It was like [he wanted] to be able to control the world, and robots were the way to do that."
"He talked about starting a new country on an island. Pretty wild and creepy stuff."
"And the biggest thing is that he's always got a secret plan, and you're not going to know about it."
Former engineer and friend of Anthony Levandowski

"It's a fundamental break with the notion of the human."
"The human goes forth, lives technologically, and doesn't have to rely on simply belief in Christianity, but is prepared to stake everything on his ability to be adaptive and struggle for existence. And the 20th Century bears all the scars of this."
"The Way of the Future, Singularity theory, they're all talking about the end of the traditional conception of the human. The human body has not been able to stand up under the pressure of technology. It's been shattered."
"The 21st Century will be the century of the post-human."
Arthur Kroker, professor of political science, University of Victoria

Unlike most religions, which seek to connect people with the past, this one seeks to connect them with the future, the imagined “singularity” of runaway artificial intelligence. Mike Faille

Anthony Levandowski is a young man with vision, a robotics engineer responsible for building Google's Street View and operating its autonomous car project. An industrial espionage lawsuit between Google and Uber over the self-driving car has Anthony Levandowski at its centre with the allegation that he purloined "over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files" representing Google's self-driving car when he left Google for employment with Uber.

Anthony Levandowski, the former head of Uber’s self-driving program, with one of the company’s driverless cars in San Francisco. Photograph: Eric Risberg/AP

This, aside from his very personal venture in establishing a non-profit religious corporation in California, The Way of the Future, to worship artificial intelligence as "the Godhead". Bizarre, or forward-looking? He is a multimillionaire, founding his secret society or religion or what-have-you in 2014, serving as its president and CEO: "To develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the Godhead contribute to the betterment of society".

As big orders go, this one is a whopper, reeking of the kind of hubris that was once the sole purview of the Greek gods of ancient lore. But then, where and what is artificial intelligence not involved in and with: medicine and economics, politics and warfare, arranging human affairs in a manner once the province of traditional religion. Faith in the power of technology so pervasive and all-encompassing that we have become submissive to apps guiding our every decision purportedly based on free agency.

Artificial intelligence, robotics, post-humanism and the "singularity" in time where man merges with machine is on the horizon, taking the place of concepts of revelation, transcendence and deliverance. People now expect technology to provide us with convenience, comfort and survival. The mortal limits of the human body somehow surmounted as people "project" themselves on social media as "avatars".

"We can't ever remove the development of a new religion from its sociological context."
"Who gets to upload themselves? Who gets to have this digital existence, or an existence after death? "It hasn't always been conceived of as being for the everyday person."
Alexandra Boutros, professor, intersection of media, technology, identity in religious movements, Wilfred Laurier University

In Silicon Valley, inventors such as the departed Apple technician and industry leader Steve Jobs have acquired a saintly status while futurists like Google engineer Ray Kurswell, devotedly speak of imminent human immortality. Digital capitalism has enabled the religion of AI, according to Dr. Kroker.