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Anthony Levandowski, a pioneer of self-driving cars and controversial Silicon Valley figure, announced the return of his AI-dedicated church in an episode of Bloomberg's AI IRL podcast.
Levandowski started his "Way of the Future" church in 2015 while he was working as an engineer on Google's self-driving project Waymo.
While the original church was shut a few years later, Levandowski's new venture already has "a couple thousand people" who are trying to build a "spiritual connection" with AI, he said, per Bloomberg.
"Here we're actually creating things that can see everything, be everywhere, know everything, and maybe help us and guide us in a way that normally you would call God," Levandowski said, adding that his aim was to help people gain a deeper understanding of AI and allow more people to have a say in how the technology is used.
"How does a person in rural America relate to this? What does this mean for their job?" he said. "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."
Levandowski's church first came under the spotlight in 2017 when he became embroiled in a high-profile court case after he was accused of stealing trade secrets.
Levandowski later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. The engineer was pardoned in 2021 by the outgoing president at the time, Donald Trump.
White House
Levandowski's official pardon said he had "paid a significant price for his actions and plans to devote his talents to advance the public good."
The former Googler is now the CEO of Pollen Mobile, a decentralized mobile network he founded in 2021.
