BETHLEHEM, Pa.- How does the man who helped to spark the personal computer revolution 50 years ago feel about where the technology is heading now in the current age of artificial intelligence (AI)? 

A capacity crowd at Zoellner Arts Center in Bethlehem found out Thursday night, when Steve Wozniak took to the stage as part of Lehigh University’s 2025-2026 Compelling Perspectives series.

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The theme for the current series is AI: Innovation, Responsibility and the Future We Shape.

Wozniak- or the Woz, as he’s known- is, of course, one of the co-founders of Apple Computer. He’s also, to quote Lehigh University President Joseph Helble, “a rock star of technology, a technology entrepreneur, and philanthropist for more than 40 years.”

In his opening remarks, Helble noted that Wozniak had expressed a “nuanced perspective” on AI. Later in the evening, Wozniak was a bit blunter in his assessment of the technology: “Be careful,” he said.

Wozniak grew up in California’s Silicon Valley before it was Silicon Valley. He recalled the San Jose of his youth in the 1950s and 60s as a place not where tech start-ups took root and grew, but rather a verdant area abounding in orchards. “Back then it was apricots, cherries and plums as far as you could see, ride your bike through fruit orchards to get to elementary school, and it all just started filling in,” Wozniak said.

Perhaps not surprisingly, he showed an early aptitude and curiosity for understanding how things worked. Computers were not yet in every home, office, classroom, vehicle and pocket, so he busied himself with what was in front of him. “My dad was an electrical engineer,” Wozniak said. “I loved watching him work formulas on paper and figure things out. I didn’t know what it was about at all, but I decided pretty early I’d like to be an electrical engineer.”

But then, Wozniak “stumbled on computers,” in manuals and journals that detailed the workings of what was then the top technology of the day. “I learned how on paper I could draw how you hook the chips together to make a computer,” he said. “The first time I tried, it took months of trying to figure out how to do things.”

Later, during his college years, he’d meet Steve Jobs. When they first crossed paths, Jobs was still a high school student, just 16 years old at the time (some sources say he was even younger), and something of a hippy, with “bare feet, eating little seed things,” Wozniak said. The two bonded over their appreciation for Bob Dylan. 

The launch of Apple in 1976 with Jobs and the Apple I computer (Wozniak’s design) would catapult them both into the stratosphere; they became millionaires when the company went public four years later.

Wozniak technically left Apple in 1985 amid reports of friction with Jobs and the direction of the company. He’s founded or co-founded a number of endeavors since then, including Woz U, a training program focused on software engineering and technology development.

During Thursday’s event Wozniak was asked, what does he think of Apple today? He’s not so enthused. But his explanation as to why seemed to be a broader statement about modern technology in general: “We built products that were going to give people a better life. You could buy a computer, you could buy software and you could run it, and it never changed. Nobody owned it. You didn’t have to go through a cloud. Somebody else owning you and making decisions that affected you, you were not subject to that.”

Then came the internet. “It turned out that it was so beautiful at first and became the problem later,” Wozniak said. “The internet enabled all the cloud-based services and the social web, and a lot of these problems crept up.”

Wozniak finds quite a few flaws with AI, too. “I believe the ‘A’ and not the ‘I,'” he said. “It’s not intelligence.” 

While conceding that AI can be a useful tool in some applications, he urged caution before putting too much faith in it. “Yes, you can ask questions and get back answers. It’s very well written. We believe anything if the grammar is good,” Wozniak said, to laughter from the audience. “But we don’t really ask, is it really intelligent enough? We’re not careful enough, and we don’t know.” 

When asked what he would tell fifth graders about AI, Wozniak likened the technology to a reporter in need of a human being to serve as an editor and fact checker: “That’s a lot of work for humans, probably more work than humans would have had anyway, right? So be careful. I’m cautious of AI.”

50 years after the Apple I changed computers forever, its creator is pulling for the man and not the machine. “I’ve always been for the human over the technology,” Wozniak said. 

Wozniak was the last announced guest in the latest Compelling Perspectives Series. Lehigh welcomed Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington in November, and Senator Dave McCormick in December.