Steve Wozniak, the engineer-inventor who cofounded Apple along with Steve Jobs, doesn’t expect artificial intelligence to become smart enough to replace the human brain or cause job losses. In a chat with Surabhi Agarwal and Shelley Singh on the sidelines of the ET Global Business Summit, the 67-year-old, nicknamed Woz, said he opposed protectionism and wanted the Internet to be free, equal and unbiased. Edited excerpts:
In the last 20-30 years, technology created so many more jobs. Now there are fears around artificial intelligence and machine learning taking away jobs. How realistic are they?
Hold on. 250 years ago it started in Manchester, England. Factories that could make cheap products. No machine sits down and says; humm, what should I work on? Humans tell machines what to work on. Machines just do it well for us. We are building technology which will make things easier for us. Machines do just the grunge work billions of times faster also that we can apply our minds to other things.
But what about jobs? Companies don’t hire those many people now.
Where is the lack of jobs? At least where I come from, the US, people do have jobs. Over time there are stock market crashes, things like dotcom crash, and lot of people lose jobs and they move out. These things come and go. But it’s not like the world is ruined.
Bill Gates and Elon Musk have said that AI could be dangerous the way we are advancing…
Stephen Hawking said the same thing. I was saying the same things for almost two years before they were. Then, I thought a lot about it, what is intelligence. These machines are not even close to intelligence. They don’t work like the human brain. I studied human brain deeply, almost got my degree in psychology. There is no machine which sat down and said what should I do today? Machines don’t think that way. They only can do things we tell them very specifically. And that also after being told a billion times of learning. That’s not intelligence. That’s not even more intelligence than picking up a red bone and putting in a red box.
So, it’s not a threat right now. But what about the future. Will they get better? What about things like (humanoid) Sophia?
Oh, there is this idea we will process more information than the brain. Even when we don’t know how the brain is structured. Maybe we will end up with a machine that’s conscious and talk like you and I. Machine will program it better than the human. I don’t buy that. We are not even close to machine which thinks like a human. Google can look at 80,000 pictures of a dog and it may get it right sometime. Show a dog picture to a one-year-old child only once and she will recognise and know a dog forever. They know the shape, the tail the feature very well. I agree with ‘A’ and not the ‘I’ of Artificial Intelligence.
Companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon control lot of things and they have people’s data. Should they be broken up?
I want Internet to be free, equal and unbiased. I am a consumer and I want to buy things and I want to control my choices. When I do a search on Google, someone has paid to be on top. I am only going to find what people with money keep in their position in control. They are using their money as power to be there and I don’t like that. People should look at how they assume a lot of market position. It’s hard to say we don’t really have a firm idea as to when a company should be broken up and why.
If you were running Apple today, what would you do differently?
I would try to spread out the divisions that work on different product areas away from the central campus. I would not have a central campus. I would let teams of smart people think independently, come up with their own solutions and overlooked by the CEO. I would make a division for computers and try to bring back the Macintosh as a computing element. That’s just one example. All the products being inter-mixed with each other makes things go slowly. I would take steps to have quicker innovation.
Do you think Apple has become too focussed and too dependent on the iPhone and after the iPhone there’s no big invention that has come out? Are you happy with the way things are or would you want to change?
Apple has taken lot of steps to keep the image of a good company. People trust the iPhone and they trust Apple. They don’t have to worry that it’s (the phone) going to be such a complicated part of my life. Because it is so economically powerful if iPhone ever drops off, so will the company. That’s the major part of the revenue, the iPhone and some apps and services. We have got the HomePod, HomeKit, Apple TV; in car we have the Apple Car Play, and we got the watch.
Some of these things are going to grow. But one of the things that we sacrificed is computers. Steve Jobs never understood the computer part — the hardware and the software and what was really in it and I think that stays with the Apple till this day. We used to own the creative world, desktop publishing and now Apple just dropped off. Everybody is buying HP, Dell…
But the Mac is still popular…
Oh, the Mac is the finest laptop in the world and very popular, but is not a major revenue generator for Apple. It’s really nice to be in the Apple world where you have the Apple computer, Apple iPhone, Apple Watch and they all placed so well together and even Apple TV.
What’s your vision for the computers? Do you think it is still relevant in today’s time when everyone is carrying a smartphone?
Parts of me change very quickly. I want to be up to the new things going on. But I have never converted over to using a smartphone. At home, I don’t use the phone to email or text. I love the big-screen computer. I get to the hotel and use my computer.
Sometime the apps are limiting on the small screen. And lot of things like social web, email, text messaging you can do that on the watch, too. You don’t even need to carry the phone. I love such simplifications like that. But the computer is really the heart of my live. I keep it so well backed up.
Do you think that given the new things that are happening, Apple could be the most profitable company in the next three to five years?
I don’t follow financials, stuff and don’t think in business terms. I think about products and technology. I have been reading about that Apple could be the first $1 trillion company by market cap and there’s Amazon as well. Companies that have good products that people want always have a chance to get there.
Tim Cook (Apple CEO) has centralised everything in one campus. And there’s lot of focus on iPhone. Do you think Apple needs a change at the top and a different kind of thinking?
I don’t think so. Because I agree with the humanist thinking, caring about the people that are diversified, making sure that everyone is taken care of no matter where you are from, accepted by all. This is part of Silicon Valley, one of the 10 counties in the US where more than half the people speak non-English at home. We have lot of respect for people from India, Korea, Japan and everywhere. We have been inundated as smart people are attracted towards a growing economy.
Lot of people are attracted to the US and Silicon Valley, but there are protectionist moves now. How does that impact technology?
I oppose protectionist moves. I totally think we should be open. I am kind of like Buddhist. Lot of people ask me where are you from. Instead of saying I am from California, I tell them I am from Planet Earth. I feel kinship with all the people. If somebody is bad to me, I am good to them.
Who are the people you admire?
I admire Jimmy Morgan, an artist from Disney — he is not a tech visionary, he’s an artist. I admire anyone who does good work. I admire Elon Musk. I admire Tim Cook as he cares about human consideration of people. We were the first noted tech company with equal pay for each gender.
What do you like about Elon Musk? Do you believe his vision is outlandish?
He has the ability to see the forest and not the trees. First of all, great products are the start of great companies. Steve Jobs and the iPhone — every major detail was right for all. Making a product for himself made it right for everyone else. Elon Musk built a large electric car — it violated every law of economics. You want cost of the car to be lower, use less battery, less weight. Why make a large car. He had a large family. Why were the first six charging stations between his home and factory? It was his own need where it started from. Now he has expanded Tesla Superchargers and you can drive anywhere in the country. Great products often come from what you want for yourself.
What are your thoughts on India?
I am not an anthropologist. I look at India more like two Indias. We often like to merge and take an average. The advanced part of India is very advanced. Lot of our innovation comes from good thinking and good brains. At Silicon Valley, there are lot of lawyers, doctors, engineers from India. The average income of advanced people in India may be higher than in the US. I don’t know that. Young people want to do entrepreneurship. But they need infrastructure. Countries that were successful built entire university cities; subset of a city based on entrepreneurship, bright people good infrastructure.
You were from the early part of Silicon Valley. Now there’s this bro culture and sexism and women are suppressed. Today, tech companies represent everything that is wrong. What are your views?
I don’t agree with sensationalist views of Silicon Valley. I never saw any sexism going on. I would not like it if I saw it. But it is obviously there in every industry, so is in Silicon Valley. When I went back to Berkeley 10 years later under a fake name as everyone knew me, three-fourths of the students were from India and Asia and it was 50-50 in terms of gender split in computer science. I saw 11-year-old girls answering all questions.
Do you regret not playing a more active role in Apple?
Never ever once. I am so glad for the person that I always was. I created my own philosophy of how I will be when I was a 20-year-old. I lived with that. I will die and sleep so happy. I love technology, interesting things, interesting people.
What’s the future of smartphones?
I think they will remain handheld the way they are now. I base my opinion on cars … cars have remained the same for 100 years — four wheels on the car, a container for people to get places. Smartphones won’t go into your brain.
