BETHLEHEM, Pa. — When it comes to AI, “I believe in the A, not the I,” technology entrepreneur and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak told an audience at Lehigh University on Thursday.
“It’s not intelligence. Everybody’s trying to make a brain. I was a company once where the engineer couldn’t figure out how to make a brain. It takes nine months,” Wozniak said to a round of laughs.
Wozniak sat for a session of the school’s Compelling Perspectives series in a discussion titled “AI: Innovation, Responsibility & the Future We Shape.”
The Woz, as he is known, provided a little of his wealth of knowledge to a crowd of budding engineers and enthusiastic fans in Lehigh University’s Zoellner Arts Center.
He also regaled the group with a peek into his intriguing past, and his thoughts on the tech world’s present and future.
Wozniak is well-known for launching Apple in 1976 with Steve Jobs, transforming the world of computing with Woz’s Apple I personal computer.
Innovations from Wozniak’s work have paved the way for modern technology, producing incredible jumps in the field that got him plenty of recognition and awards.
The issue with AI
The issue with AI, Wozniak said, is that it “doesn’t understand things or what they are,” even if it can make a convincing case that it does with the right responses.
It has its place, he said, though as it stands, humans still are a vital part of the process.
“The AI can give you, an intelligent human, a lot of ideas that you can relate to, and get new ideas and decide where to go, even if you're creating things,” Wozniak said.
“I'm cautious of AI, and I just want something that feels to me like the real person, with the heart of soul and feelings that cries when, you know, a dog gets rescued."Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak
“But you know, my programming friend use Microsoft Co-pilot. And sometimes it can do a little, small, simple programming job, and sometimes it just didn't get it right.
"And the work to overdo it, it just takes basically about as much effort anyway. Humans are not getting displaced. It just doesn't do the job fully enough.”
With hallucinations and a lack of lack of proper sourcing for information, issues with AI still are prevalent, Wozniak said.
“I'm cautious of AI, and I just want something that feels to me like the real person, with the heart of soul and feelings that cries when, you know, a dog gets rescued," Wozniak said.
Wozniak advised students to learn how AIs work, and to use them as a tool to increase their own learning, as opposed to simply getting an answer.
The start of an icon
Every icon has to start somewhere, and in his speech, Wozniak said for him that was in a humble little community in what would become the epicenter of tech in America.
Before Silicon Valley became what we know it as today, it was ripe with fruit orchards and families who worked in the electronics, Wozniak said — including his father.
“[M]y dad was an electrical engineer," Wozniak said. "I loved watching him work formulas on paper and figuring things out. I didn't know what it was about at all, but I decided pretty early I'd like to be an electrical engineer."
“I thought, ‘I'm going to be an engineer, but they don't design computers. I just love designing computers on my own."Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak
That kicked off a lifelong interest, with plenty of chances to explore the tech world via science fair projects which “got me a lot of awards and acknowledgements,” Wozniak said.
While he was fiddling with Erector Sets, crystal radios and ham radios — Wozniak secured a ham radio license at 10 after passing a test — that interest only grew, he said.
By the time he had read an early computer handbook explaining the internal workings of the machine, he was looking to acquire chips and begin building his own systems — on paper.
That included a rudimentary calculator operated by toggling switches, which won him an award in an eighth-to-12th grade competition — when he was just in eighth grade.
“I thought, ‘I'm going to be an engineer, but they don't design computers," Wozniak said. "I just love designing computers on my own.
“Every weekend I would go into my bedroom and, without any help from anyone, nobody else doing it with, I'd sit on paper and design which chips would make this computer.”
'Vice principal wants to see you'
While Wozniak had some compatriots — especially other children whose parents worked in electronics — he and his friends would sometimes do chores for a neighbor, earning switches as payment.
Wozniak said his propensity for pranks and tech got him in some trouble once: He produced an electronic metronome that would tick rhythmically, and increase speed once a resistor changed.
Woz said he planted the device in a friend’s locker as a joke, but once he returned to the scene, he found the locker empty.
“Somebody found it and had taken it out," he said. "And then my counselor said, ‘Oh, the vice principal wants to see you in his office.'
“I'm sitting in his vice principal's office thinking they're going to give me a math award, and I saw two cops walk in with a big box of wires hanging out of it.
“And then I sat down with two cops and the principal and the vice principal and the dean and counselor. And the principal described how he hurt his hand.
"He opened it up, he clutched it to his chest and ran out to the football field to dismantle it.”
That landed Wozniak in a juvenile detention center for a night, but he said it didn’t dissuade him from experimenting.
First computer company
Working with a pal, he developed the “Cream Soda Computer,” relying on parts from the friend’s father and other cheap sources.
That pushed Wozniak to pare down operations and find out how to make the project work with less expensive equipment.
Wozniak eventually got a job where he developed the circuit for the arcade game Breakout, creating a system that could display color via binary.
"He appreciated me, and that made me his best friend.”Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, speaking of co-founder Steve Jobs
“That’s the reason, really, why Apple’s first logo was a six-color logo, a six-color Apple," he said.
"Because who else was going to come up with color TV for free, making your computer color, making the games color?”
Wozniak said he first met Jobs during a break year from college, while he was working with a friend to build a computer. That friend introduced the pair, he said.
“We were good friends because [Jobs] appreciated that I can design computers," Wozniak said. "He knew that was some kind of valuable expertise. He knew some electronics, but really not how to design things or make computers.
"So he appreciated me, and that made me his best friend.”
That friendship would lead to the Apple I and II, which paved the way for the company to become the hallmark of the technology industry for years to come.
'I didn't sell out'
Nowadays, though, Wozniak said he isn’t as enthused about Apple as when he started it with Jobs.
He said that back in the day, you could buy a computer and software and it was yours — something that changed with the advent of cloud computing.
In 1985, President Reagan awarded Wozniak the first National Medal of Technology. In 2000, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and awarded the Heinz Award for Technology, The Economy and Employment.
And in 2017, Wozniak co-founded Woz U., a post-secondary education and training platform focused on software engineering and technology development.
But as for what he is most proud of, Wozniak said he loves the recognition he gets from other engineers when it comes to computer designs.
“Also, I’m very proud of the fact that I didn’t sell out," he said. "I didn’t get super infinite rich and change.”
He said he sold stock in Apple to other employees pre-IPO at price, essentially setting them up for life.
'Learned it on my own'
Thursday's event ended with a 15-minute question-and-answer session.
Lehigh Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Nathan Urban and President Joseph J. Helble read a question from a student asking about how to continue working with AI without becoming crippled by a need for it.
“Just be aware and be skeptical, and use it well," Wozniak said. "But make sure you learn — that’s important.”
“As far as designing chips and writing that's faster, good," he said. I'm all for that, because you're going to feel good about yourself, especially when you find solutions that aren't in the book."Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak
Asked about how other people can bring their own visions to life, Wozniak said, “You can’t ever have a formula that guarantees success.”
Instead, he said, it takes inventors.
"They want to run in a laboratory and try to hook it up and make something out of it," he said. "The inventors are where it’s going to start.”
Speaking on AI regulation, Wozniak said he was for it, especially to help determine from where a large language model draws its source material.
Questioned about where the industry should go from here, Wozniak more or less went back to the sense of curiosity and discovery, encouraging everyone to get in there and fiddle around, just as he did all those years ago.
Though he did have to throw a little jab at Lehigh for a laugh, of course.
“As far as designing chips and writing that's faster, good," he said. I'm all for that, because you're going to feel good about yourself, especially when you find solutions that aren't in the book.
“Everything I do with computers, I've learned it on my own, not in school.”
