Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak: Humans will become the pets of robots - in a good way

Humans will become the pets of robots we create - and that is a future to look forward to, claims Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

Having previously warned that artificial intelligence will be "scary and very bad for people," saying robots will "get rid of the slow humans," Wozniak has changed his tune to suggest that robots being smarter than humans is no bad thing.

Speaking at the Freescale technology forum in Austria, Wozniak said: "They're going to be smarter than us and if they're smarter than us then they'll realise they need us. We want to be the family pet and be taken care of all the time."

His family pet analogy was first realised when he began feeding his dog the same meals as he prepared for himself. "I got this idea a few years ago and so I started feeding my dog fillet steak and chicken every night because 'do unto others.'"

But sure a scenario where robots look after humans will be centuries away, Wozniak admits: "It's actually going to turn out really good for humans. And it will be hundreds of years down the stream before they'd even have the ability [to look after humans]. They'll be so smart by then that they'll know they have to keep nature, and humans are a part of nature. So I got over my fear that we'd be replaced by computers. They're going to help us. We're at least the gods originally."

His comments may be difficult to stomach for some of AI's critics. Elon Musk, CEO of electric car company Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, recently warned that AI poses "the biggest existential threat" to humanity and is "potentially more dangerous" than nuclear weapons. Musk has also previously said developing advanced AI which can think for itself would be like "summoning the demon".

In case his views on AI weren't clear by now, Musk has also said: "If [AI's] function is just something like getting rid of email spam and it determines the best way of getting rid of spam is getting rid of humans."