‘They just sound too dry and too perfect’

Apple The company, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary on April 1, has brought its technology into the pockets of approximately 1.5 billion people by developing the eight-bit personal computer Apple I, Macintosh, iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods over the past half century.

Co-founder Steve Wozniak, who has left his mark on this new era of technology, prefers to touch the grass.

“I’ve really become a little disconnected from technology,” Wozniak said in a recent speech. CNN interview. “And I believe nature is much more important than what humans do.”

Wozniak The innovator behind AppleHe served the company until 1985 and developed the first two computer models as well as the first Macintosh, which made computers popular. graphical user interface.

This invention opened the doors to a wide audience by making PCs more accessible to non-technical users. Despite Woz’s contributions to the ubiquity of devices, he doesn’t see the same value in the current big trend in technology.

“I don’t use AI much,” he said. “I often read something [AI produces]It sounds too dry and too perfect, I want something from a person too and I’m so disappointed.”

Apple has largely stayed out of the AI ​​arms race that encompasses much of the tech sector. Just dedicated $12.7 billion in AI capital expenditures That pales in comparison to the $300 billion generated by AI hyperscalers in fiscal 2025 Microsoft, Amazonand Alphabet were spent en masse.

And rather than developing an in-house AI, Apple is leveraging another company’s technology to power its virtual assistant Siri with Google’s Gemini.

Tech’s big names who defend analog life

Woz’s skepticism about artificial intelligence is shared by many leaders. A. Survey conducted with the participation of more than 6,000 senior managers Research in the US, UK, Germany and Australia, led by Stanford futures of work genius Nicholas Bloom, found that nearly 70 percent of CEOs, CFOs and other senior executives use AI at work for less than an hour per week, and 28 percent do not use the technology at all. Approximately 7% of survey respondents reported using AI for more than five hours in a typical workweek.

Still, AI use among senior executives in the workplace is increasing. Gallup poll We found that 69% of leaders were using AI in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from less than 40% in mid-2023.

But even as artificial intelligence gains momentum, technology entrepreneur staffEven those responsible for the increased use of AI tools and devices are placing limits on screens in the home.

YouTube Co-founder Steve Chen, who served as YouTube’s chief technology officer before YouTube was acquired by Google in 2006, said the following in a speech: Stanford Graduate School of Business speech last year he and his wife limit their children’s viewing short-form content.

“I think TikTok is entertainment, but it’s all entertainment,” Chen said. “Just for the moment. Shorter content means shorter attention span.”

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel said he will allow his two children only one and a half hours of screen time a week in 2024. Bill Gates, Snap’s Evan Spiegel and Tesla’s Elon Musk all similarly limited their children’s use of technology.

This week the jury found YouTube and Meta responsible for the damage caused by young users in designing platforms with addictive features.

These concerns were even shared by Apple executives. When the iPad was released in 2010, then-CEO Steve Jobs, who founded the company with Wozniak, said that his children had never used this device.

“We limit the amount of technology our children use at home” told New York Times.

Current Apple CEO Tim Cook said earlier this month that he was concerned about how much artificial intelligence people were using. He added that technology is neither positive nor negative, and that it is up to the inventor and the user to determine its value.

“I don’t want people to use [devices] “too much,” he said. report with Good Morning America. “I don’t want people to look at a smartphone any more than they look at someone’s eyes. Because if they’re scrolling forever, that’s not the way you want to spend your day. Go outside and spend it in nature.”

This story first appeared on: Fortune.com