Add Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to the list of geniuses terrified by the prospect of a future reliant upon artificial intelligence, with him now joining the likes of Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
In an interview with the Australian Financial Review, Wozniak painted the picture of a terrifying AI apocalypse in which humans are forced to bow down to their computerized masters. While Hawking, Gates and Musk also admitted to fearing a potential Skynet-esque uprising, Wozniak’s comments were decidedly more fatalist and more than a little terrifying.
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“Like people including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have predicted, I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people,” the Apple I and II designer 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.”
He continued: “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.”
Fellow personal computing revolutionary Bill Gates previously said that although in the near future “machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent,” after a few decades the “intelligence [will be] strong enough to be a concern.” Wozniak’s comments point to just how concerning it could possibly be.
However, Wozniak did give us some hope by referencing Moore’s Law, an observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore who noted that computer processing speeds double every two years, before stating that the size of silicon transistors would eventually reach the size of an atom, given that they allow processing speeds to increase as they reduce in size. If these transistors became any smaller, scientists would then have to delve into quantum computing in order learn how to manipulate subatomic particles, something which has not yet been achieved.
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