Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, accused Elon Musk and Tesla of telling lies during the moderated Q&A portion of Wozniak’s appearance on campus Wednesday night in the Screaming Eagles Arena. 

Curt Gilstrap, associate professor of business communication, moderated the questions Wednesday evening. Gilstrap asked a question about the future of computing involving collaboration between software and the human mind as well as his thoughts on Elon Musk’s neural link. 

Before Gilstrap could finish his question, Wozniak said, “Elon Musk – don’t use that word around me.” 

“Truth is the apex of everything that’s good. I’ve grown up with that my whole life,” Wozniak said. “You were truthful. You just don’t make up stories, and Elon Musk and Tesla has told so many lies.” 

Wozniak spoke around 7 p.m. Wednesday as a part of the innovative speaker series hosted by the Romain College of Business and the USI Foundation. After telling his life story, Wozniak answered questions submitted by audience members in a moderated Q&A session. 

Wozniak did not elaborate on his statement about Elon Musk and Tesla telling lies and the subject of the conversation was changed. At the time of publication, Tesla had not responded to the request to respond. 

According to Business Insider, in 2018 Wozniak said he believed Elon Musk when he said Tesla would have a car that could drive itself by the end of 2017; however, Tesla did not produce this car in 2017. 

“I believed that stuff,” Wozniak said in 2018. “Now I don’t believe anything Elon Musk or Tesla says, but I still love the car.” 

On Wednesday, Wozniak said the mistake with artificial intelligence is calling it artificial intelligence. 

“The ‘A’ is right but not the ‘I’,” Wozniak said during his campus appearance. “Artificial, I don’t know, idiocy or something.”

According to Wozniak, it is hard to get out of the decisions artificial intelligence makes for one’s life.

“Everyone wants to talk about what they call AR at Tesla,” Wozniak said. “I swear our cars have tried to kill us a hundred times.” 

AR stands for augmented reality. He said he takes long road trips, and the artificial intelligence can never predict what will be on the road. 

“In so many ways, it can’t equal what the dumbest driver would ever do and never will,” Wozniak said. “Because you can’t ever predict what you think is going to be on the road, for example, in the case of driving.” 

He said cars should be as safe as possible and notify the driver, but the driver should remain in control.

 “Tesla doesn’t even have level one solved right because they call beta just for cruise control,” Wozniak said. “I’m sorry, you don’t have anything out of beta series. You just don’t have it, so out of all of the companies that do self-driving and stuff, Tesla’s in last place.” 

Wozniak said he does drive a Tesla vehicle. “I drive a Tesla, and I love it.” 

Read more about Steve Wozniak’s presentation at USI here.