Apple’s Steve Wozniak on Elon Musk: ‘Sometimes you get so rich, it goes to your head’ | Technology News
Steve Wozniak, the engineering pioneer who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, did not mince his words on prominent Silicon Valley figures such as Elon Musk stepping into direct government roles.
“Elon Musk, I don’t know what got into his head…Sometimes you get so rich at these big companies, and you’re on top — it goes to your head, and you’re the most incredible person in the world and the brightest and you’re going to dictate what others will do,” Wozniak was quoted as saying by CNBC.
Addressing attendees at Barcelona’s Talent Arena developers fair on Tuesday, March 4, Wozniak said, “I think that the skills required in politics are very different to those skills needed in technology companies…It does make sense to run a government like a business.”
“When you run a business, you look for a consensus and a sharing…If half your employees feel one way and half the other way, you negotiate, you compromise,” he said.
While tech companies hired lobbyists to exert political influence in the past, Wozniak said that he viewed tech CEOs taking on formal or informal governmental roles as a concerning development.
The lines between the tech industry and government have become increasingly blurred since the return of US President Donald Trump to the White House. In particular, Elon Musk’s appointment to head the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has sparked outcry over the world’s richest man having unprecedented influence over US government operations.
What else did Steve Wozniak say?
In his speech, Wozniak lamented how big tech companies have become “very big and they own our lives.”
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“When Apple started, it was you who would set up your computer and it was all of your own work…But after the internet came, now you have to subscribe, subscribe and subscribe to everything and once you have subscribed, you still do not own it,” the Apple co-founder who stepped away from his role at the company in 1985, said.
“The cloud is a problem as before you were able to protect your work, but now you need to trust companies with your creations,” Wozniak further said.
On the capabilities and limitations of generative AI, Wozniak opined that the technology provides “a lot of ideas and directions on how to proceed” but lacks human emotional capacity.
“I trust the I, but not the A,” he said, while warning against blindly trusting AI as it can “trick you into things”.
