There are stories that appropriately are filed in the weird category, and the report by Wired Magazine that self driving guru Anthony Levandowski established a “religious organization” in 2015 certainly takes us into a new realm.
Levandowski, whose actions have led to a multi-billion lawsuit by Waymo (a division of Alphabet, which is the umbrella company for Google) against Uber?over the alleged theft of self-driving technology secrets, apparently believes strongly in the concept of singularity.
Singularity is “the day in our near future when computers will surpass humans in intelligence and kick off a feedback loop of unfathomable change.”? In other words, it is when artificial intelligence becomes smarter than human intelligence and — if you want to be a doomsayer — humans will become slaves or at minimum servants to the technological borg.
Wired writes:
When that day comes, Anthony Levandowski will be firmly on the side of the machines. In September 2015, the multi-millionaire engineer at the heart of the patent and trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, Google?s self-driving car company, founded a religious organization called Way of the Future. Its purpose, according to previously unreported state filings, is nothing less than to ?develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence.?
While I don’t plan in the near future to give up my 5,774 or so year-old-religion (Judiasm) to worship at Levadowski’s church, the accelerating pace of artificial intelligence and its implication for anyone associated with marketing must be noted with thoughtfulness.
If computing systems can put the pieces together and segment/categorize potential clients, and then send just the right psychographic messages to just the right individuals at the right time, the businesses which are able to implement them and put them into practice will (at least until others catch up) have a massive competitive advantage for marketing.
In practice, most contractors, architects and engineers won’t even think right now of playing at this bleeding-edge technology. But you should think about it; and consider the various tools for market segmentation and focus available with online resources such as Facebook and Google.
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