Robots will make us into their pets because we just want to be taken care of, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has warned.

The artificial intelligence that will control the world used to worry Wozniak, he told a technology conference. But he has realised that it will be good for us because robots will opt to keep us as part of nature, reports TechRepublic.

"It's actually going to turn out really good for humans,” he told the conference. “And it will be hundreds of years down the stream before they'd even have the ability.”

By that time, the robots will be aware of their place in the world and opt to keep us around, in the same way we keep family dogs, he said. As such, he joked that he had taken to feeding his dog “filet steak and chicken every night because ‘do unto others’”.

“They'll be so smart by then that they'll know they have to keep nature, and humans are part of nature. So I got over my fear that we'd be replaced by computers.

In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history Boston Dynamics Boston Dynamics describes itself as 'building dynamic robots and software for human simulation'. It has created robots for DARPA, the US' military research company In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history Google's self-driving cars Google has been using similar technology to build self-driving cars, and has been pushing for legislation to allow them on the roads In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history DARPA Urban Challenge The DARPA Urban Challenge, set up by the US Department of Defense, challenges driverless cars to navigate a 60 mile course in an urban environment that simulates guerilla warfare In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history Deep Blue beats Kasparov Deep Blue, a computer created by IBM, won a match against world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. The computer could evaluate 200 million positions per second, and Kasparov accused it of cheating after the match was finished In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history Watson wins Jeopardy Another computer created by IBM, Watson, beat two champions of US TV series Jeopardy at their own game in 2011 In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history Apple's Siri Apple's virtual assistant for iPhone, Siri, uses artificial intelligence technology to anticipate users' needs and give cheeky reactions In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history Kinect Xbox's Kinect uses artificial intelligence to predict where players are likely to go, an track their movement more accurately

“They're going to help us. We're at least the gods originally."

Wozniak pointed out that if robots did want to take over the world, they’d send a message that personal appliances and other things around the home should become internet-enabled — as the internet of things, which is being worked on by Apple as well as other companies — is looking to do.

"I want the Internet of Things,” he said, reported TechRepublic. “It does things for me. I don't have to think.

“The Internet of Things, if it ever did want to take over the world, would send a message to the computers of today saying, 'build us the Internet of Things, that's what we need.' It makes things nice for humans, so we want this.”