Apple co-founder and trusty quote-spinner Steve Wozniak reckons it’s only a matter of time until robots rule the world.
Speaking to the Australian Financial Review, Woz waxed lyrical on a future where artificial intelligence supersedes humankind.
“Computers are going to take over from humans, no question,” said the former Apple lead.
He went on to suggest that AI outstripping human intellect could be a reality in just 30 years time.
“Like people including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have predicted, I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people,” Woz explained.
“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.”
Wozniak admitted he didn’t know what an AI-led future would look like, but that he’s already planning for the worst.
“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,” he said, adding “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.”
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The ex-Apple engineer said that the end of Moore’s Law – that’s the suggestion that processor speeds approximately double every two years – is the only way we can hope to avoid an AI takeover.
He accepted, however, that advances in quantum computing could make Moore’s Law unstoppable, but we’re not quite there yet.
“For all the time they’ve been working on quantum computing they really have nothing to show that’s really usable for the things we need,” said Woz.
“I hope it does come, and we should pursue it because it is about scientific exploring. But in the end we just may have created the species that is above us.”
