Media & Culture

‘I am not a fan of AI’: Apple’s co-founder slams artificial intelligence, saying it lacks human emotional depth

Wozniak criticizes ChatGPT and Claude, saying AI can't match human storytelling or emotional understanding.

Deep Dive

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has publicly criticized the current state of artificial intelligence, stating in an interview on Fox Business's 'The Claman Countdown' that he is 'not a fan' of systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude. His primary critique centers on AI's inability to replicate human emotional intelligence and narrative understanding. Wozniak explained that while an AI might provide a long, detailed factual answer, a human would offer a story infused with emotional context, which he finds more valuable. He emphasized his desire for a thinking entity that 'know[s] what I might feel and understanding emotions,' a quality he finds absent in large language models (LLMs).

Wozniak also highlighted practical reliability issues, noting that after testing various LLM tools, he sometimes struggles to get a straight, consistent answer. This criticism arrives as Apple, the company he co-founded, is aggressively pursuing its own AI strategy with 'Apple Intelligence,' albeit facing significant development delays. Wozniak's skepticism is not new; he warned in 2011 that technology could make humans 'less relevant.' His current comments create a stark contrast with CEO Tim Cook's view of AI as 'profound and...positive,' underscoring a fundamental philosophical divide between the company's past and its AI-driven future.

Key Points
  • Wozniak criticizes AI tools like ChatGPT for lacking human emotional depth and the ability to tell stories instead of just listing facts.
  • He points out practical unreliability, struggling to get consistent, straight answers from various tested large language models (LLMs).
  • His stance directly opposes Apple's current AI push under Tim Cook, occurring as the company's 'Apple Intelligence' faces rollout delays.

Why It Matters

Highlights a core debate in AI development: whether pure information processing can ever replicate or replace human contextual and emotional intelligence.