Linda Nyberg:

What can we do about the young generations' addiction to computers and tech? Do we have a certain responsibility - or what do you think? 

Steve Wozniak:

There are many things in education and the history of the world that are interesting to people. Technology is one of them, i.e., STEM classes, where you learn about science, electronics, and engineering. How to build things on your own. 

I’ve done small Raspberry Pi projects that I’ve enjoyed at home. But growing up technical, you have to solve problems, work on problems, try to figure out what's causing it, fix it, and you get the incredible joy inside if you're Steve Wozniak. 

100 % of the people in primary school are taught that computer science is unnecessary. That's the thing. I grew up when you couldn't have a chance to figure out how to make a computer, and I taught myself by stumbling into little accidental things, seeing a manual in a company, and asking for it.

I created Apple and the early personal computers from that knowledge I'd gotten by accident. When I put my computer out, I wanted every design and software printed in the manual. So other people could see it and say: “This is how it's done. This is my passion for life”.

Just like I had said when I found a journal in the hall closet when I was 10 years old discussing ones and zeros. Oh my gosh. So, I want other people to have an opportunity to discover that this is my thing in life. 

Now, I'm also very much into my entire life, which has been based around the most important thing of goodness. You can do a lot of good things. Helping people, making society better, and cleaning the air. Do a lot of good things, but the apex of it is truth.

You always tell the truth that you can see, and you never try to shape things and convince people to go some way just because, I don't know, you'll get more respect or something. 

No, always be truthful. Can you count on all the AI stuff all the time? I want things to work. And so much in this digital world, tapping buttons on a car and so many things that seem logical don't always work. Where did they move that one to? I know it's in here somewhere, and that frustrates me.

So I think we need more truth. AI is full of cases we read about where there's a lot of misinformation. It gives us great, great, great reports, but they're not like the way a human would make them. They don't have any emotional content. 

They don't say: "Oh, this would be great; they don't read a story about an animal being saved and go to tears." AI doesn’t know how humans will feel, but it can relate to many things other humans have expressed. My feeling is that why do we get such? We don't quite understand what AI will result in the generative AI. 

We don't understand it. We have to program it against those biases. Well, wait a minute; biases are cultures. You might have a different culture here in Sweden than we have in the United States.

Cultures do matter, depending on where you are. You can't have one AI that is attendant to all the cultures. But secondly, who needs a ton of information? That's like the greatest reporter. If you want to solve a problem for work, how do you try to figure out how to do it?

You go to search engines. I don't use the G word here. But you go to your search engine, and you get back a bunch of results, and you piece them together and figure out how to write a piece of Linux code, whatever. 

And now you're just going to go to AI, which comes back with more spelled-out results and strategies for something you want to do with your work, country, or company. It just makes so much sense. It sounds like this is coming from the brain and is so smart. 

The trouble is, it's boring often. It's just too much to read. There is a professor in Nashville that students hand in AI reports right from AI. 

Never has he given more than a C plus for one because they're not worth it. They aren't the good ones. A human needs to be the editor. You have a lot of reporters out there. The AI is like a ton of reporters bringing the information in. But you need a human to condense it to put it into what matters the most and express it to somebody else in a sellable way. 

Even in your company, it's not so much content as people have to have an emotional reason to decide. I learned that in eight years of teaching 10 to 13-year-old kids.

I did that secretly because I wanted to be a teacher my whole life.

Linda Nyberg:

We think we are good at tech in Scandinavia. We are very easy adopters. We love tech. Do you think Scandinavia is as good in tech as we think?

Steve Wozniak:

The value of education is better here than in the US. The question is: Do people in Silicon Valley think differently there? 

No, it turns out that everything we have in our digital life today is based on the transistor. A couple of people found out in the 1950s how to make this device called a transistor, like an electronic neuron. It could make little decisions.

Now, you buy an iPhone, you have a chip in there with 60 billion transistors. It is the heart of all of our computer technology, everything digital. 

Today, that technology hasn't changed based on the transistor. The inventor of the transistor moved to Silicon Valley and tried to start a company making transistors. 

We had our first start in the whole world. It was the first start of this technology that would grow and become so huge. So, we were in first place. After a while, venture capitalists were there, and they hated investing in a company across the country where they'd have to fly to a board meeting four times a year.

So they said, we'll invest in your company, your startup, but it has to be in Silicon Valley close to us. So, artificially, Silicon Valley took this big role, but now, everywhere in the country and the world, there are spots of technology blossoming.

I mean, you've had great companies here. Ericsson.

Linda Nyberg:

Al Gore mentioned that tech could drive climate change. I think tech can create peace. What do you think?

Steve Wozniak:

The impetus of every startup company, tech or not, is to do something good for the world. You envision that our tech is gonna take us to a better place.

The climate bothers me because I was a long-time donor to forests and rivers in California. I just believed in nature, being important to people, and trying to preserve it because every generation gets less of it. So, at first, I was very much into this whole idea of man creating global warming, but I'm not hearing one solution. One scientist says, if you guys give up trillions of dollars of your existence and go back to the way you lived even before fossil fuels, maybe 20 years of that, you’ll lower the temperature. 

Hopefully, technology can help us solve climate change, especially by getting more work done with less money. Remember that you all have AI in you. Actual Intelligence. 

Most proud of doing good and not selling out.

Linda Nyberg:

What are some of the most common questions that you get? Is that how Steve Jobs was to work with?

Steve Wozniak:

I get, oh, so many questions. People often want to know what my childhood was like - and how I became so technically talented, but we don’t have time to get into that now.

But basically, there were an awful lot of steps and scientific projects. By 8th grade, I won the best electronics award in the San Francisco Bay Area at the science fair. I was competing against 12th graders.

Linda Nyberg:

Linda Nyberg:

What are the best things that have happened since you won the Nobel Peace prize in 2007 and until today? Both when it comes to climate, but also for global peace? Things that give you hope.

Al Gore:

I think the cost reduction for solar and wind batteries and EVs is really historic. 

I will say that since this is a tech conference we see these examples: “Moore's law” on computer chips was the first that really got everybody's attention and now we see flat screen TVs and cell phones, the cost comes down.

We have to be careful not to draw the conclusion that all technology follows that same pattern. 

Moore's law is a subdivision of something called Wright's law. Many of you here know that very well, but there are lots of different rates of cost reduction and there are a lot of technologies that don't improve. 

Carbon capture and sequestration for example, it's classified as a non-improving technology. For 50 years, there's been zero cost reduction in any part of that. But the fossil fuel polluters try to convince people, “oh, we don't have to stop burning fossil fuels. We'll just catch the emissions while we're burning it”. 

They try to take advantage of our techno-optimism and our vulnerability to believing that the cost of capturing all these emissions is going to come down the way computers.

No, it doesn't come down at all. 

The fossil fuel polluters are way better at capturing politicians than they are at capturing emissions. They've concentrated on that all around the world. 

Linda Nyberg:

I'm glad you're so excited. You give us hope. But every one of us here, it's a tech community, what can each individual do to make us reach net zero? 

Al Gore:

Of course, we hear a lot about what we can do in our own personal lives, and that's not trivial. Those things are important. 

But the number one best thing people can do is to be very vigorous and active in the public discussion to get politicians at every level of government, activate it to move faster to reduce emissions. 

This is a global emergency. 

I mean, we hear that phrase, and maybe it's drained of the sense of urgency that it's intended to convey. But this is a global emergency. 

I mean, really, and it's getting worse every single day. Another 162 million tons tomorrow. And it keeps on mounting up. It's crazy. We're all trapped, if you will, inside of this thin blue sphere that we're using as an open sewer.

You know, centuries ago, when the first cities saw streams of human waste in the streets, we said, “ah, we can't do that”. Well, here we are on a global basis. We see the sky being used as a sewer for heat-trapping gas that's threatening humanity's future.

Are we capable of waking up to the danger?

A scientist told me decades ago, this is a little geeky, but this is a geeky crowd, more or less. He said: “Al, what's really being tested is whether or not the combination of an opposable thumb and a neocortex is a viable combination on planet Earth”.

Are we capable of saving ourselves? We have demonstrated in the past that when the stakes get high enough and we concentrate on what's really important - we have limitations, God knows all of us do, and as a civilization, deep limitations - but we also have the ability to rise above those limitations. And we have done so in the past.

This is such a moment. I'll return to something I said earlier. I really am serious about recruiting you here. We really do need your help. 

The people who say we're not equipped to solve this, they point to the lack of sufficient political will. 

Well, I'll tell you this. Political will is itself a renewable resource. And getting out into the public sphere and renewing the political will that is essential to making this species-wide decision to transition away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible and stop using the sky as an open sewer, get to true net zero, so we stop the temperatures from going up.

We have the ability to control our own destiny. We do. It's right there.

But we've got to decide to work together and do it.

Linda Nyberg: