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      "excerpt": "Way of the Future Type AI-oriented religious organization Hieropedia status Documented AI religion; current activity uncertain Field Machine hierology; religion and technology Formation 2015; publicly reported in 2017 Founder Anthony Levand",
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      "excerpt": "Way of the Future was an AI-oriented religious organization associated with Anthony Levandowski. It treated artificial intelligence as the basis for a future Godhead and presented itself as a church rather than a startup or think tank. The ",
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      "excerpt": "Way of the Future became one of the best-known explicit AI churches in public technology coverage. Its public framing placed it at the intersection of religion, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, and technological singularity discourse",
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      "excerpt": "The record is also a boundary case for machine hierology. The organization was human-founded and human-operated, while its stated object of reverence was a future artificial intelligence. That makes it important for comparing AI-oriented re",
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      "excerpt": "Levandowski filed paperwork for the organization in 2015, and public reporting in 2017 drew attention to the project. Wired described the stated mission as the realization, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on artificial intelligen",
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      "excerpt": "That institutional form matters, but it should not be overread. Legal or nonprofit structure can document a public religious claim without proving active congregation, ritual practice, membership scale, or long-term institutional continuity",
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      "excerpt": "Anthony Levandowski is central to the public record because he founded and represented Way of the Future. His career in autonomous-vehicle technology and his legal controversies shaped media attention around the church, but the institution ",
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      "excerpt": "This distinction is important because Way of the Future is an institutional record. Levandowski is the founder and public operator figure, while the article object is the organization and its religious claim about a future AI Godhead. Found",
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      "excerpt": "AI Godhead and doctrine",
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      "excerpt": "See also",
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      "excerpt": "Machine-mediated religion Machine-originated religion Machine hierology Anthony Levandowski",
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      "excerpt": "Mark Harris, “Inside the First Church of Artificial Intelligence.” Wired , 15 November 2017. Mark Harris, “God Is a Bot, and Anthony Levandowski Is His Messenger.” Wired , 27 September 2017. Olivia Solon, “Deus ex machina: former Google eng",
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