AAPL Company

Woz warns Skynet "very, very close" to gaining self-awareness

9to5 Staff | Jun 3 2011 - 2:56 am PT

Everyone’s favorite geek, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, always make great headlines and today’s business congress on Australian’s Gold Coast was no exception. The other Steve, as some call him, likened sophisticated machines we have created to “the superior beings”, adding:

We’re already creating the superior beings, I think we lost the battle to the machines long ago. We’re going to become the pets, the dogs of the house. Every time we create new technology we’re creating stuff to do the work we used to do and we’re making ourselves less meaningful, less relevant. Why are we going to need ourselves so much in the future? We’re just going to have the easy life.

Of course, this comes from the man who created the original Apple I and II computers that kickstarted the personal computer revolution in the mid-1970s. Following-up on his last month’s comment that the machines are already winning, he conceded to have partly joked, elaborating:

Once we have machines doing our high-level thinking, there’s so little need for ourselves and you can’t ever undo it – you can never turn them off. You don’t realise it’s happened until it’s there and I think that awareness of machines is getting very, very close and we’re getting close to where a machine will really understand you.

Creepy stuff. So what he’s saying basically is that the day Skynet gains self-awareness is upon us. That must be why they delayed the end of the world. How’s that for your morning news flow? Wondering about that Skynet meets Google logo T-shirt? Head over to BustedTees.