Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak once warned computers would make us irrelevant, and at a technology conference in late June, he elaborated on this, saying the concept of artificial intelligence caused him sleepless nights. However, he has moved passed fear, and reached acceptance.
In Woz’s future, the world is at least partially controlled by artificially intelligent robots, but not in a bad, Terminator-style way. “They’re going to be smarter than us and if they’re smarter than us then they’ll realize the need us,” he’s quoted as saying by TechRepublic. He continued, “It’s actually going to turn out really good for humans.”
He admits this sci-fi world is “hundreds of years down the stream,” and reasons that the ‘bots will be clever enough to understand the need to keep Earth’s bountiful natural resources, of which humans are a part. Therefore, in Woz’s mind, they won’t incinerate us with ridiculously powerful lasers. Because we’ll be the equivalent of the family dog to these legions of super-intelligent beings.
“I got over my fear that we’d be replaced by computers. They’re going to help us,” he said, adding, “We’re at least the gods originally.”
However, he’s not entirely convinced the computers aren’t coming to get us, and that the Internet of Things may be one of the stages in their masterplan to rule the world. “If the Internet of Things,” he (jokingly, we think) warned, “ever did want to take over the world, it would send a message to the computers of today saying, build us the Internet of Things, that’s what we need.” By making our lives simpler and easier, it could eventually take us by surprise and presumably, wipe us all out.
That hasn’t stopped Woz from having fun with the early examples of a connected life. “I only do it to prank my life,” he joked, and talked about honking his car horn in the garage at 4am in the morning, or turning lights on and off just to annoy his wife. Please Woz, never change.
