In a few months it is 40 years ago, Steve Wozniak sat in front of his home-built computer, connected to a television, and wrote letters on the screen. The prototype was the basis for the first Apple computer he built himself the following year, and the beginning of an era in the computer industry.
Yeah, sure I was a kind of artist, he says.
On its own, in love with the possibilities that electronics gave, he had learned all the secrets with transistor circuits, and managed to build structures with fewer components than what others could not.
-Anledningen that I built with few components was to I was too lazy to pair them, he says jokingly, but adds:
-Enkelhet is the ultimate degree of something sophisticated .
As he spoke Tuesday at the event From buisness to button he reminded also of another single driving force – his and Steve Jobs bad economy.
We had no money. It is one thing worth thinking about, because it means that you have to accomplish things with what you have. I had to think of how I would do things that they could afford them.
-Motivation is sometimes more important than knowledge, he adds.
But although his work laid the foundations for a global success, perhaps unprecedented, he split his effort. Asked if he is afraid of the future, he says:
-More than that. I regret my contribution to it.
First, he thinks of how his dream was to give people control over their lives and more time.
But today we need two of the family who are working to afford a home. It is the wrong way, he said.
Since he thinks of artificial intelligence, AI.
-Datorer coming closer to the ability to think. And what if computers get feelings, if they can solve problems in the world, and becomes ten or a hundred times smarter than humans. It’s scary if it happens.
Even now begins computers to teach themselves, and the final step will be if they can program themselves themselves.
-Småbarn program themselves to talking, Can computers learn to talk that way? And learn to hold a glass without dropping it? They act more and more like people, such as with IBM’s [brain-inspired] chip Synapse. And Google is on the same track with Ray.
He refers to the entrepreneur, author and currently Development Manager at Google, Ray Kurzweil, who consider AI level with man’s will in 20 years.
-Ray say 20 years. I would say 20 to 200 years. But I do not want them to succeed, and fortunately, if there is I believe, it will not be in my lifetime.
One obstacle may be Moore’s law, Steve Wozniak believe may be about to expire for that soon we are down to the atomic level to store a one or zero.
Men in all this concern is Steve Wozniak while optimistic, almost lyrical, the possibilities of AI.
One area is education, where he has been teaching experience. And he notes that teaching becomes more effective the smaller classes are. Best is one teacher per student.
-Then you can never fail to explain something.
Och he thinks that computers could play a role in teaching.
– The problem is that they are not sufficiently interactive. There do not care who you are. But when the conscious, maybe then. For then would students be able to go forward at the pace they want. Not like today, where the school has a tendency to shape us. Students should respond with the same answer as the others, not with the answer they thought up.
And he also gives a toss to school policies in California, according to Wozniak has the worst schools in the United States all 50 states. The reason, he says, is a law that limits the property tax, and Wozniak believes that it exists for only a third of all families have children, and they do not get more votes for their many children.
Another area where Steve Wozniak sees great potential in AI, robotics and self-propelled vehicles – two areas that he would be happy to work with myself, if it was not so great focus on his person.
-Robotik contains so many areas – Mechanics, engines, transmissions, radio control, microprocessors, software, he notes , and says that he regularly participates as a judge in a robot competition where creativity is rewarded the most.
He would also like to develop a self-driving car – with bendable screens along the walls so that it could change the appearance both inside and outside.
And he states that the self-driving cars will take over.
-If twenty years from now people will not be able to drive a car. Already in ten years we will have many self-driving cars, along with cars driven by people, and then they self-driving to be so much better, with fewer accidents and more efficient driving.
-Den leading cause of death by accident is the car, he points out.
His third example of AI is his favoritapp – Apple’s digital assistant Siri. He tells a couple of episodes when he sought a response or thought annotate anything on the calendar, and received unexpected help from Siri.
-Wow ! Eureka!
But the question is whether it makes things better or worse, he says, and returns to the concern about the AI.
On the issue of intelligent machines will create more jobs than those that disappear, he is not sure.
-Det is an unexplored area. We do not know. Think about people’s job will be to watch the movie.
But here and now he wants most encouraging creativity. He advises business leaders to listen to young people and smart, allowing them to work with “skunk work” maybe in a secluded part of the company’s premises, in order to break with the company’s culture.
– Young people who build things is crucial. And yet, when they come to something new and better as the company may find it difficult to move in that direction, he says, referring to his own experiences at HP.
HP calculators developed with a sort of reverse logic input, and when Texas Instruments brought the counter where you could write equations that you write them on paper, believed HP’s engineers did not for a moment that it was good. But Wozniak showed them that it was superior.
For the same reason he celebrates Tim Cook who released until the larger model of the iPhone 6th All competitors had then phones with large screens.
-Tim broke the dogmatic attitude. It was so amazing.
Silicon Valley’s success, he explains mainly by the inventors of the transistor settled there, and that the area thus got an edge with companies like Fairchild, and with Moore’s Law.
-It must grow naturally, with successful companies, with the spin-off of better ideas that become other companies and related products. In the end follows the capital by.
Apple’s innovation strength he explains in a similar way.
-Är the real, or just a show? Apple has control, you will find the innovative companies, buy them up, and get the reputation of being innovative.
And what changed our lives most [iPhone] is tredjepartsappar he added.
Then he also recorded the Apple Watch, and notes that the sold in fifteen different varieties. Which differ mainly by different watchbands.
-Apple is a bracelet business now. It’s not that Apple we created, not the one that changed the world. But it is Apple we have now.
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