The eMerge Americas technology conference, a coming-together of entrepreneurs and investors, opened its fourth edition Monday with a presentation in which Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said machines are only tools to make the most of human beings.

Before an auditorium packed with over 1,500 people at the Miami Beach Convention Center, Wozniak gave little importance to the theory of computers running the world because they're smarter than people, adding that he totally opposed the idea that humans will someday be a secondary species after machines.

Dressed in pure black, but informally with colorful sports shoes, the designer of his company's first lines of computers, Apple 1 and Apple 2, spoke specifically of fears that in the near future almost every kind of work will be done by machines.

He acknowledged that there are sectors where machines are taking over from humans, as has happened throughout the history of mankind, but said the fact that one job category is disappearing doesn't mean that the same thing is bound to happen to all others in the future.

About the current situation of the company he founded together with Steve Jobs, he said that it is a financially healthy organization that people trust, though he avoided speaking directly about some of its new products.

Wozniak is one of the more than 100 speakers meeting Monday and Tuesday at the Convention Center in this South Florida city, where Marcelo Claure will also voice his ideas.

The Bolivian, who in 1997 founded in Miami the Brightstar Corp., a global wireless distribution and services company, said during an interview with CNBC network show host Melissa Lee that it is a great experience to be part of a US corporation.

He said that nothing has changed since his years as a start-up entrepreneur, and he continues to infuse that spirit into Sprint, which, under his direction, has become an aggressive, agile and innovative competitor in the wireless industry, a company that must be very careful, he said, with the steps it takes in a telephone market where firms like Verizon are getting into the content business.