After Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has now expressed his fear that computers will eventually take over the earth from mankind. In a wide ranging interview with The Australian Financial Review, Woz, as he is affectionately called, touched upon topics as diverse as artificial intelligence and the forthcoming Apple watch.
“Like people including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have predicted, I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people,” Wozniak said. “If we build these devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they’ll think faster than us and they’ll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently.”
“Will we be the gods? Will we be the family pets? Or will we be ants that get stepped on? I don’t know about that … But when I got that thinking in my head about if I’m going to be treated in the future as a pet to these smart machines … well I’m going to treat my own pet dog really nice,” he continued.
Woz then went on to offer his views on the Apple watch, stating that its defining factor would not be the watch itself but whether an app emerges that made it hugely advantageous to wear the watch all the time. He said Apple Pay on his iPhone had proven very useful, when he had found places to use it, and he imagined it would be even better with a watch.
However, he would be buying the entry level Apple Watch Sport, rather than plunging in with the most expensive models. Woz admits that Apple’s pricing for the device is not a savvy move. The watch’s price, which ranges from $350 to $10,000 is outrageous.
“If you buy the really high-priced ones, the jewellery ones, then you’re not buying a smartwatch that has a bunch of apps … Like a Rolex watch, you’re buying if for prestige and a label and a symbol of who you are,” Wozniak said. “The fact is the difference between a $10,000 watch and a $17,000 dollar watch is only the band, and for an engineer like me I don’t live in that world, that’s not my world.”
