Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak, who serves as High Point University’s Innovator in Residence, told a group of students from HPU’s Stout School of Education on Feb. 19 that he believes artificial intelligence lacks the human element that teachers bring to the classroom.
Wozniak offered his opinions about AI and shared his passion for teaching during an hour-long seminar moderated by Dr. Amy Holcombe, dean of the Stout School of Education, inside the Callicutt Life Skills Theater. The seminar kicked off Wozniak’s latest visit to HPU and came during a particularly eventful time for the university.
HPU welcomed Wozniak and Netflix Co-Founder Marc Randolph, HPU’s Entrepreneur in Residence, to campus as part of its 2024 Innovation Summit. They mentored students during their visit and helped HPU celebrate its centennial anniversary, which will continue throughout the year.
Speaking to a large audience that included local educators and community members, Wozniak said the role of teachers is to inspire their students, encourage them to think critically and be a friend when needed. He said AI cannot replicate that.
“We’ll have to include AI in our lives, and it’s just another one of these many steps. It never diminishes the human, though,” Wozniak said. “The human, I think, should always be more important than the technology. Put a lot of work into the technology to make it work in human ways rather than the human putting work into figuring out how the technology works.”
Before pioneering the personal computer and starting Apple with Steve Jobs, Wozniak said one of his goals was to become a fifth-grade teacher. He eventually taught computer classes to elementary-school students in California for several years after leaving Apple.
Wozniak said teachers used to be a main source of information for students, but students can now find any information they are looking for on the Internet. He stressed, however, that teachers can form a connection with students in a way that technology cannot.
“We aren’t skeptical enough,” Wozniak said. “And especially with generative AI and ChatGPT, you can get a whole beautiful document written and it’s just so cool, but it still doesn’t have that emotional content like it came from a human thinking, a student thinking.”
Following his seminar, Wozniak met with a group of HPU students majoring in game design inside the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication. He mentored the students during a game design workshop and offered advice and words of encouragement while viewing the video games they had designed.
The students created every aspect of their video games, including the story, characters and audio.
Nathan Harvey, a junior from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was excited to show Wozniak his game, “The Devil’s Night,” about a grandchild who encounters a series of strange circumstances and must solve clues to get rid of a demon.
Wozniak autographed an engineering student’s Apple laptop computer during a class.
“It’s definitely a surreal experience,” Harvey said of playing his game for Wozniak. “You get this legend that’s looking at your game that you’ve been working on for a while and just say like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool. It’s incredible how far games have come.’”
Wozniak also met with a team of game design students who have spent the past two months creating “Paper Pals,” a video game in which players must complete puzzles and challenges to advance through a board game-like structure.
Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak, who serves as High Point University’s Innovator in Residence, mentored students during his visit to HPU’s campus on Feb. 19. He watched as Nathan Harvey, a junior from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, played a video game that he designed inside the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication.
Wozniak used his background as a computer programmer to ask the students about their computer code and what sort of game engine they were working with to build “Paper Pals.”
“His feedback helped us to think differently by asking deeper questions about how a game would function and what we’re going for long term,” said Nathaniel Bryant, a senior from Waxhaw, North Carolina. “He began to ask us questions that started to push us to thinking about our game in different light.”
