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While he's all for embracing the sharing economy, Steve Wozniak is not sure Uber has its drivers' best interests at heart.

At the Future Transport Summit in Sydney Monday, the Apple co-founder told reporters he had serious concerns about the tech company becoming a monopoly and its treatment of its drivers.

"Like a lot of people, I have some distrust of Uber and how their drivers don't really realise at first that they aren't making much money," he said, "maybe losing money on the wear and tear of their cars."

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He was particularly concerned about the amount Uber pays the freelancers who drive for the ridesharing service. "Uber will push their workforce down to the absolute lowest minimum wage that they can get away with," he said.

"That's how I think of Uber: Not very nice thoughts," he continued. "I want to use Lyft instead of Uber when I can now."

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In addition to the ridesharing service Lyft, which has not launched in Australia, he would like to see some other players emerge in the space globally: "I would rather there be a lot of competitive forces. I'd like there to be four or five choice that are like Uber anywhere you go," he said. "It's a little disappointing to me and sad that we don't have that."

David Rohrsheim, general manager of Uber in Australia, pushed back on Wozniak's criticism. First of all, he pointed out to Mashable Australia, the tech icon is not an Uber driver. 

"More than 20,000 [driver-partners] monthly are putting money in the bank account using Uber, and they've got complete flexibility to log on as much or as little as they want to," he said, referring to Uber's Australian figures. "That's the number one thing drivers come to the platform for.

"It has to be a good deal for partners or otherwise they won't use the platform."

That's not to say Wozniak is entirely against the sharing economy and the changes it may bring to the workforce overall, although he admitted he had not thought through all its implications. When asked about concerns that sharing economy services, from Uber to Task Rabbit, will only serve to consolidate the profits of the tech elite and not workers, he suggested "that's the nature of change."

"You might come up with a new technology and some old jobs disappear and there are robots building cars," he said. "Well, the jobs pop up somewhere else. The economy just shifts, it moves."

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TopicsUber

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