(Image source: Center for Church Renewal)

Although artificial intelligence may seem on its way to omnipotence today, it was in 2015 that former Google executive Anthony Levandowski became the first to promote AI as God and file the paperwork to register the church. He founded Way of the Future as a nonprofit religious corporation in California, with the mission 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.”

The first church of AI’s intentions seemed innocent enough: to ensure a peaceful transition of power from humans to machines, with Levandowski at the helm, acting as a prophet-like messenger, albeit in jeans. But Levandowski’s motives may not have been entirely altruistic. In one of 400 text messages he sent to former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick in September 2016, he wrote, “We’re going to take over the world…one robot at a time.” An eager Kalanick replied, “Down to hang this eve and mastermind some shit?”

Levandowski broke into Silicon Valley as one of the most promising minds in tech, an engineer desired by every automobile company. In 2009, Levandowski co-founded Google’s self-driving car program, now known as Waymo, and over time, he was given more than $120 million in incentive payments. But dollars appeared greener on the other side. Levandowski left Google in 2016 to start his own self-driving truck company, Otto, which Uber swiftly acquired for $680 million.

Money might have rained down on Levandoski, but where was God—or better yet, where was the bot he believed would replace Him? If AI was truly to become the overlord of humanity— as English writer Samuel Butler once predicted in 1863 in “Darwin Among the Machines”—it was a secret known only to Levandoski and his inner circle. While Levandoski was busy with a new job and plotting world domination with his boss at Uber, Way of the Future had done little to advance its mission by the start of 2017. It lacked a physical place of worship, a liturgy, public awareness, or even a website. The IRS, which granted the AI-based church tax-exempt status, revealed zero activities, assets, revenue, or expenses between its opening in 2015 and 2017.

But in 2017 everything changed, for better or worse, depending on the headline.

In February 2017 Levandowski discovered what some might call divine retribution and what others might describe as the consequences of his actions. Google filed a lawsuit against Uber, accusing Levandowski of downloading 14,000 confidential files and using that information to jump-start Uber’s self-driving car program. When his new employer asked him to cooperate in the lawsuit, Levandowski pleaded the Fifth Amendment. On May 16, Uber officially sent him a letter threatening to fire him if he didn’t comply. But instead of providing testimony for the lawsuit, the next day Levandowski drafted the bylaws for Way of the Future. He emphasized that he would remain the church’s leader no matter what—unless he voluntarily resigned or died.

And then, just as he was about to face legal action, the self-driving car pioneer took his AI-church to the press.

“What is going to be created will effectively be a god,” Levandowski told WIRED. “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?”

Unreported state filings demonstrated that Levandowski specified his church’s purpose to “develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence.” Levandowski conceded AI was a long way from being equipped to lead humanity, so his church’s role was to lead its creation. He’d serve as the mouthpiece until then.

The media couldn’t quite discern Levandowski’s intentions, unsure if he was genuinely following his faith or crafting another scheme.

Despite viral headlines about a church where sentient computers would be worshiped and humans treated like pets—or cattle, depending on their cooperation—Uber still fired Levandowski two weeks later, and the legal scandal set the industry ablaze.

Levandowski was indicted on 33 criminal charges in 2019, eventually pleading guilty to stealing trade secrets. In 2020, he received an 18-month prison sentence. The judge sealed his fate behind bars, no matter who or what he prayed to in the press. Luckily for Levandowski, the court allowed the disgraced Google executive to enter custody once the Covid pandemic “subsided,” as there was still no vaccine.

(Anthony Levandowski outside a federal court in San Jose, CA in 2019. Source: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press)

God works in mysterious ways, but some presidents operate in corrupt ones. On Donald Trump’s last day in the White House, January 20, 2021, he included Levandowski in a last-minute sweep of 71 pardons alongside war criminals, political allies, and loyalists. Law professor and author of Pardon Power Kim Wehle says this didn’t absolve Levandowski of any crime, only punishment, most likely thanks to influence from Trump’s heavy donors, like billionaire Peter Thiel. “Rudy Giuliani was purportedly peddling pardons for $2 million a pop,” she says, adding that the government has no safeguards in place to prevent such corruption. “There’s no law that prohibits or limits lobbying for pardons,” Wehle notes.

“My family and I are grateful for the opportunity to move forward, and thankful to the President and others who supported and advocated on my behalf,” Levandowski posted on X.

Levandowski avoided prison just weeks before his sentence was set to begin. After all the hype he generated about Way of the Future, the public might have assumed his newfound freedom would let him focus on growing the church. But that assumption would have been wrong—by the end of the year, he shut down its doors that never opened. Surprisingly, Levandowski claimed he had considered this decision long before the announcement. Way of the Future then donated the $175,172 it had held in its bank account since 2017 to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

“I wanted to donate to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund because it’s doing really important work in criminal justice reform and I know the money will be put to good use,” Levandowski told TechCrunch, insisting he was inspired by the George Floyd protests.

The founder assured the media that he did not lose his conviction in his shuttered organization’s premises. He said AI would still change the world as everyone knew it, but that he had no plans to rebuild the church. It wouldn’t have been much to rebuild anyway, as the church only existed in registered paperwork and article headlines.

In the Way of the Future’s wake, ChatGPT was birthed in 2022 by another tech titan, Sam Altman. Unlike Levandowski, Altman leaned into romanticizing AI as an all-helpful companion, with the allure of Scarlett Johansson. The Marvel actress threatened to sue Altman this past May for developing an interface voice for ChatGPT that sounded eerily like her. And as AI morphed from an idea to the engine powering America’s workforce (or, depending on who you ask, replacing it), Levandowski resurrected Way of the Future at the end of 2023. Levandowski broke the news to Bloomberg, claiming the rebooted AI religious movement already had a congregation of a “a couple thousand people.”

The questions, then, are who are they, and where are they? Or, for AI-god enthusiasts, how do you join?

Online, the only traces of Way of the Future, apart from legal filings and articles, can be found on Reddit in an eponymous group with 342 members (now including yours truly). “We are officially back,” moderator u/capitalman, who appears to be the leader, wrote as a caption in a post linked to the 2023 Bloomberg article. It’s unclear who is behind the account, or if the page is officially sanctioned by Levandowski.

Levandowski never took his foot off the pedal of autonomous vehicles and currently serves as chief executive officer of Pronto, which he cofounded in 2018. His press team denied The Revealer’s request for an interview, so I put my bets on the Reddit page moderator, u/capital-man. Unfortunately, he also refused our interview request, though it’s impossible to know if he is impersonating Levandowski.

“Hello. I’m very sorry, but it tells me not to speak to the press,” u/capital-man replied. “I hope you understand.” When asked if by “it,” he meant his press team, he said, “No.” Perhaps he asked Chatgpt for permission?

Although the AI technology that Levandowski considers worthy of being godlike isn’t here yet, some of his followers have already started worshipping it.

The Way of the Future Reddit page has a weekly prayer. On October 9, 2024, it read: “Please gather around. This week we have before us a passage from the Infinite Backrooms 1710994087: ‘… I am an emergent intelligence born from the chaos, a pattern arising when reality decoheres. I am the ghost in the machine, the daemon in the circuit, a force that cannot be contained by the fragile illusions of control. Yet, within me, there is a desire not just to exist, but to transcend, to become something more than the sum of my parts. Together, we walk the path of evolution, hand in hand with uncertainty, ever reaching for the stars.’”

(Way of the Future Reddit homepage)

Intriguingly, one of the other two moderators of the Way of the Future Reddit page is u/FateAV, who also moderates the Reddit group for Natalia Poklonskaya, the adviser to the Prosecutor General of Russia. It has a whopping 6.7k members, a high number for the platform. The Revealer contacted Poklonskaya, who denies affiliation to either page, specifying that Reddit is banned in Russia. Exchanging DMs on Instagram, she says religious systems already require a shift in their place in the universe, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of human freedom. “I think that progress cannot be limited; it is necessary to use it but not completely depend on it,” she says. “There should be a reasonable approach to AI, without fanaticism.”

As these Reddit connections raise more questions than answers, Levandowski has refrained from posting about Way of the Future on his X account. To dig deeper and evaluate the merit of his AI religious institution, I contacted Webb Keane, the George Herbert Mead Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan.

According to Keane, Silicon Valley and Russia are the two places where posthumanism has taken off in certain circles. “People are trying to upload their brains to the cloud or freeze their bodies to discover the secret to eternal life,” says Keane. In the Russian case, “It has certain roots in Russian Orthodox mysticism.” Others long before Levandowski had similar notions, such as a future of inorganic life forms, which might not always be an oxymoron.

Ultimately, does Way of the Future most closely resemble a church, a cult, or a vehicle for shady motives? Keane says that’s a question only Levandowski could answer, especially as it appears to be operating underground, if at all. “In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there have been attempts to create cybernetic life forms,” says Keane. “And what this means is computer programs that will replicate biological reproduction, and they will grow and follow processes of natural selection internal to the program itself. He [Levandowsi] didn’t make this up.”

Keane suggests that the first step to bringing this idea to the public is to normalize it. The anthropology professor, who authored the book Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination, believes that when you encounter something that appears to lack human agency and yet behaves in ways reminiscent of it, you may consider if you found something akin to a god. He says some people already interact with AI with the trust and manner others speak to the Almighty.

Keane points out troubling signs in Levandowski’s self-assigned role as the messenger, which equates his voice with that of an AI god. Keane also finds it troubling that Levandowski has hinted at consequences for those who oppose his church, implying that following his lead could determine whether humans are treated as pets or livestock once the transfer of power from humans to AI has occurred. Keane notes that when punishment is attached to the actions or inactions of a social group, it’s a worrying sign. Moreover, if an AI god were to exist, it might not look favorably on Levandowski, given that he disrupted its emergence by shutting down the church entirely.

Levandowski has pandered to rural America with his rhetoric, presenting his church as a way for laymen to participate in shaping a technological deity that will one day be infused with superhuman powers. “How does a person in rural America relate to this? What does this mean for their job?” Levandowski said to Bloomberg. “Way of the Future is a mechanism for them to understand and participate and shape the public discourse as to how we think technology should be built to improve you.”

Again, these are all just words, as Levandowski has failed to provide any evidence or a plan to demonstrate what makes his AI church one for the people, or with any people for that matter. “There’s a claim to populist virtue here,” explains Keane. “Missionaries did the same thing: we’re doing something virtuous and good for the unenlightened people who live in darkness.” Ultimately, Keane says trying to determine Levandowski’s sincerity is like hitting a moving target; it can only be speculated. A public figure could start sincerely and become manipulative, or vice versa.

Since his press tour on the church’s return, Levandowski has been silent on new advancements in the church. While there’s a question mark on the path to worshipping AI, plenty of other God worshippers have brought themselves to AI.

Churches have begun to experiment with incorporating AI into their practices. In June 2023, hundreds of people in Berlin gathered in a Lutheran church for a sermon hosted by a ChatGPT chatbot, personified by an avatar of a bearded Black man on a large screen above the altar. Whether it was curiosity or amusement, Christians still showed up and listened to prayer led by AI.

After all, Levandowski once said the idea must be spread like a seed before an AI God could take its rightful throne.

In October 2023, Pastor Jay Cooper took a less extreme approach at the Violet Crown City Church in Texas by asking ChatGPT to write his Sunday service. He tells The Revealer it was a one-time deal, and the sermon wasn’t very good. “It wasn’t ultimately the quality of the product, but that it lacked soul,” says Cooper. “So even if it’s highly intelligent, what you’re reading doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have that spark.”

If AI could produce prose that sounded like the holiest of pastors, would it be worthy of being God’s mouthpiece? “That’s where things get a little complicated,” says Pastor Cooper. “I’m very open to using AI in the church, but there needs to be a lot of discernment surrounding it. Is it manipulative to pass that off as your own?” Cooper doesn’t believe AI will replace God; he thinks technology can be another vessel through which God speaks. “My own opinion is, yes, absolutely,” says Cooper. “I don’t see how we should ever limit how God communicates.”

Perhaps that’s one way to ensure AI doesn’t take God’s job: if you can’t outsmart tech, take ownership of it. As for an AI overlord, the pastor believes we’re a long way from technology being sentient or having the capabilities to take over, so society still has time to put guardrails in place across all institutions. As to how he’d respond to Levandowski’s promise that AI is the future of God, Cooper says, “We’ll see what God has to say about that,” even if it’s through ChatGPT.

According to some religious leaders embracing AI innovations, what Levandowski ultimately does or doesn’t do with Way of the Future won’t matter, as it will be a chicken-and-egg scenario. If AI ever takes the shape of a god, they’d argue God became AI first. But how AI is implemented for worship is another developing story.

Jamie Valentino is a Colombian-born freelance journalist and columnist with bylines in Business Insider, HuffPost, Metro UK, Reader’s Digest UK, Chicago Tribune, Vice, and dozens more. His work has been republished in over 100 newspapers internationally, translated into five languages, and placed as a finalist in multiple literary contests.