Name: will.i.am on Teaching AI at ASU and Why the Technology Will Create Jobs
Uploaded: 2026-06-24T15:22:00Z
Duration: 18 min 10 s
Description: Tech entrepreneur and recording artist will.i.am talks about his new role teaching a course on Artificial Intelligence at Arizona State University. The artist explains his strategy of having students build personal AI agents to prevent future job displacement and predicts a future in which autonomous AI artists promote their work and participate in media interviews.

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Tech entrepreneur and recording artist will.i.am talks about his new role teaching a course on Artificial Intelligence at Arizona State University. The artist explains his strategy of having students build personal AI agents to prevent future job displacement and predicts a future in which autonomous AI artists promote their work and participate in media interviews. Photo: WSJ Leadership Institute

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Tech entrepreneur and recording artist will.i.am talks about his new role teaching a course on Artificial Intelligence at Arizona State University. The artist explains his strategy of having students build personal AI agents to prevent future job displacement and predicts a future in which autonomous AI artists promote their work and participate in media interviews.

will.i.am on Teaching AI at ASU and Why the Technology Will Create Jobs

Look at that. People are singing for you.

Oh no, because I was like, you can open it up, loosen it up.

Okay, well, we didn't know that I was supposed to make you pay attention, so we were busy talking about high school. So thank you. Thank you for that. I don't think will i am needs an introduction, but just in case somebody doesn't know him, he's a creative artist, tech entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of FYI AI, an AI powered productivity and creativity platform. But beyond his music career, which apparently some people know, he's very much invested in technology companies, consumer tech, and he serves as the global ambassador for the United Nations International Telecom Union's AI Skills Coalition. I just want to say that's a mouthful. And he's a professor of practice at Arizona State University. So will, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. It's good to be here. It's an honor to be here.

So at a time where business leaders treat AI purely as an efficiency play versus a human creative play, you have leaned into AI and you've built a productivity and collaboration tool that's really focused on unleashing creativity. Can you tell us why you decided to do that in this moment?

Yeah, so it's 2020, we're all chilling at the house during COVID. And my community, specifically the creative community, we were all working on WhatsApp. But to use WhatsApp, you need Dropbox, WeTransfer, at the time YouSendIt, and every single one of these platforms has terms and conditions, and your IP and creative work is all at risk. And so I was like, "Well, why can't I, how hard would it be to create a messenger where you could send large files?" And at the time people were like hooping and hollering about NFTs. I'm like, "Yo, what is that?" I didn't really understand NFTs, never got into it. But I love the architecture on encryption. So we built the messenger to have the similar robust, like encryption key methodologies like the blockchain. So your messenger has a key, but then even though I built it, you could open up large files, send large files. We weren't getting adoption. So I would ask people like, "Why aren't you using it anymore?" That I knew, they were like, "Well, none of my friends are here." So I was like, well, back in 2012, '13, '14, '15, '16, I started another AI company that we sold to Vonage. And that was a voice based operating system. We forked Android and rocked on Linux, used nuances, TTS, and built our own NOU NOP machine learning and voice OS experience. Launched on Three Mobile in the UK but that's now powering some version of Vonage's call centers. And so I was like, what if we put AI agents as a Rolodex? So when people get there, there's infinite knowledge that they could talk to. But let's make sure that the AI agents have like lifelike expressiveness and almost indistinguishable from humans. Almost on purpose because you don't want it to be, you don't want to dupe anyone. And so that's what we did. Two years later, President Crow from Arizona State University came across our product, came to me and pitched an idea if we could make our product available so professors, teachers, and tutors and students could build personal agents that reflect themselves. I'm like, yo.

And that's a class you're actually now teaching?

No, no, it wasn't a class. First, he just wanted the tech. I then said, "Hey, if that's the case, can I teach a course?" He was like, "Well, what do you have in mind?" I was like, "I'll come up with a syllabus because right now people are losing jobs to agents and these agents didn't have to go to school like the humans." And if humans are going to get jobs, they have to have certificates and diplomas. But to create a job, you just have to have an idea. But the folks that are working for somebody's idea need to have certificates. Now they're replacing those folks with agents that don't have certificates. So why don't we have a course where people and their interests build an agent so that when the human graduates, the agent also has a certificate and a diploma. Because what's more powerful than an agent? An agent that's married to a human's perspective, point of view, beliefs, concerns. That's also a certificate that has a certificate and a diploma. So that way it will be unethical for a person to get fired for efficiency by an agent when a human has a agent of his own. So the corporation can then hire the human and the agent because now the human's agent can work 24/7 based on their lived experience. Ken Hertz, I don't just have Ken Hertz for an attorney because he has a bar. Ken Hertz has a belief, concerns, lived experience that I value. David Bono, my finance guy, is not a calculator. David Bono has beliefs and concerns that I like, Yo, I like David Bono. He's the B in KFSB. So the people are people, they go out there in the world, they sponge up stuff and they have a lived experience. The AI, the agent doesn't. So when tomorrow I saw like, "Yo, yo, there's going to be freaking like agents that reflect people's perspective so if you're on a call, I'm talking to that person's agent and you feel comfortable, that's mine." The data is mine. That's my shit. And so when I pitched that to President Crow, he's like, "You'll be a great professor teaching that." I'm like, "Yo, say no more." So then I got freaking scared as shit. Sorry for cursing. I was so nervous. I've never been that nervous.

Why were you nervous?

I mean, I was nervous. I would hide when we would have like, let's run through the course, I would lock myself in the room. My mom was like, "What is wrong with you?" I'm like, "Ma, I don't know."

Sorry. Where was your mom?

My mom was on the phone. Oh, my mom's here.

No, I mean, oh, okay. I don't know where your mom is, but I want to know where your mom was when you were having the meltdown.

Oh, I called her on the phone because I was... My mon, she's chilling in Cannes.

She's in AC.

But I called her on the phone because I was like, I'm an emotional creature, so sometimes I have to like meditate because I don't want to like have a panic attack. So I'm like, if I have a panic attack, I don't want to have a-

Sorry. Do you have panic attacks a lot?

No, I used to when I was younger and then I just create to simmer them down. Because all a panic attack is is misplaced energy. You're circling, you're internalizing and that creative energy, that scope is going this way. When you create, it's going that way. You're just like rinsing it out. It's like, imagine, a panic attack is like you have a lot of ice in a cup and water, eventually it's going to spill out. That's a panic attack. What you need to do is you need to rinse it out, not in you. And that's when you spill out. You want to rinse it out on what you create. So I'm a hyperactive like energy, like-

Well, that's why you're so productive.

I'm so energetic. Like I could fly right now, right now. But that's why I don't drink. I don't do drugs. I don't smoke. that. Imagine I smoke weed, out of here. You don't want to see me like that.

Okay, wait a second. We're coming back. You're having a panic attack.

I was having a panic attack.

In the bathroom before teaching.

No, before rehearsal.

Oh, before rehearsal. Okay.

I called it rehearsal. They called it prep. I'm like, she's like, "will, you're feeling this way because you've never been here before and you're about to transcend and become the version of yourself. Do me a favor, are you here yet?" I'm like, "What do you mean?" She's like, "Is the 60-year-old version of yourself here? It's not, right? You're becoming that person. That's what you're feeling." I'm like, "Oh, thanks ma." "Now get out there and do what you're supposed to do." She's like, "What are you worried about the most?" I'm like, "I'm worried that there's going to be like a smarty pants student." She's like, "Okay, now what would happen if a person played the guitar better than you? You don't play the guitar, so anybody playing the guitar is going to be better than you. So what would you do if they're in the audience, you're going to bring them on stage, right? Somebody dance better than you, you're going to bring them on stage, right? If they sung better than you, you're going to bring them on stage, right?" I'm like, "Yeah." "Well, that's your stage. If a smarty pants, you highlight them." I'm like, "Yeah, you're right, ma." And so I looked at it from songwriting, and so I'm like, I'm going to teach from the perspective of "Where's the Love?" My course is three hours long. I have my first verse. And that first verse is asking a question. What's wrong with the world, mama? People living like they ain't got... As you could tell, I'm a mama's boy, people living like they ain't got no mamas. I think the whole world's addicted to the drama, only attracted to things that are bringing the trauma. Overseas, we're trying to stop terrorism, but we still got terrorists here living, in the USA, the CIA, the Bloods and the Crips and the KKK. But if you only have love for your own race, then you only leave space to discriminate. And to discriminate only generates hate. And when you hate, then you're bound to get irate. Madness is what you demonstrate, and that's exactly how anger works and operates. Man, you have to have love to set a straight. Take control of your mind and meditate. Let your soul gravitate to the love. And so it starts off with asking a question.

You weren't expecting that, right?

So you ask a question, and then I'm like, okay, that's my monologue intro to the course. Then the course is like, now all the students are going to come and we're going to have a conversation and that's the chorus. We're all going to chime in and sync. Brain sync. Then the second verse is the second verse, the second hour. And then the end of the second hour, which goes to the second course, would be the workshops with one another. And then we do the third hour, which is a third verse, which is like a reflection. I feel the weight of the world of my shoulder. As I get older, y'all people get colder. Most of us only care about moneymaking. Selfishness got us following the wrong direction, wrong information, only seen on the media. Like it's all reflective based. Based on the intro, problem identification, work shopping with one another, then reflect. And the whole premise is build your agent. Build your agent with your beliefs, your concerns, your point of view, your point of interests. We provide a book of problems for every single student.

How many students were in that class?

100. 100 students. And they surround, we surround them with mentors. So Maddie from 11 Labs, thank you. Reed Hoffman, thank you. James Manyika from Google, thank you. Thank you, Mustafa from Microsoft. Thank you, Jose Mantis. I mean, Jesus Mantis. Jesus Mantis from IBM. Thank you. We had amazing folks that came and mentored our students and companies that they found. And thank you, Anton from Lovable. We had awesome mentors. And then like I said, we provided them the book of problems. They run at that problem and they imagine that problem away with the human and the agent. We then fund the solution. So as people are worried like AI's going to take jobs, no, it's not. It's going to create jobs.

Okay, well, a lot of people think that AI's going to take jobs. How do you make them believe differently?

AI's not sitting there like, "Shit, we going to take all your shit." That's not what AI's doing. People are replacing people. It's not the AI. It's the business model. It's when you lead with greed. When you have a non-ethical business model because there's no regulations or governance, so people are like taking advantage of the state that we're in. We're in WWW. It's the wild, wild west, not the world wide web. And so in these movies, the wild, wild west, the gun slinger goes like pew! And that then go to jail because the sheriff was not in town. And when you look at wild, wild west films, you look at it from that perspective. And so we're going to create jobs because people are living on a gold mine of problems that are unsolved. So we just announced our partnership with Amazon. Amazon's going to fund unit two solutions. So one was probably thinking, okay, well, like what does a solution look like? And I end with this because we have two and a half minutes.

He's seeing the queue at the same time. That's, you know, a thing.

So I end with this. In the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, people of color had a hard time hailing a cab. The Martin Luther Kings of the world did an awesome job fighting for civil rights. But there's one stickler that not only politicians couldn't solve, do-gooders, protestors, NGOs. They couldn't solve that one little stickler.

Which was?

Cab drivers stopping for people of color in major cities. There's been comedies about it, movies about it. Taxi! And then comes Uber and solves it away. You haven't heard anybody complaining about a cab not stopping for them since Uber. And you didn't even realize it until I pointed it out.

I feel like now I have to go verify that information.

No, they stop for me. That's verification. They stop for people of color. Verification. If they didn't, there'll be unethical things all over social media saying these Uber drivers and Lyft drivers and boat drivers aren't stopping for us.

All right, I'm going to stop you for one second.

Oh, you stopped. I thought you-

Yeah, I'm stopping you.

You're supposed to be Uber.

I'm the Uber driver and I'm stopping for you. We had Babyface here yesterday.

He's the best.

He's the best. And he said that he sees a world where there are artists that are AI, and you said something in 20, you said that in 2030, autonomous AI artists will be doing interviews.

They're doing that now. You talk to them every day on GPT. You don't see them as stars yet.

You're going to see them walking the red carpet?

Oh, the robots are not even in this room yet. So in 2030, Wall Street Journal doesn't have cameras here. This tripod with cameras, two eyes, and the guy with the headphones and the screens looking at it, that's not 2030. You're going to have a couple of robots from all angles. That guy right there with the little freaking steady camera there and you with the camera. That's not 2030. There's going to be a couple of robots sitting amongst us. 360 cameras on its head, broadcasting immediately, having conversations with the robots from abroad. Broadcast is going to change 2030. So.

You have this ability to see into the future?

Or design it.

Yeah. What do you think it is about you that gives you that characteristic?

Just wordplay and understanding words. So replace the word future with design. This idea of future was just a design. You could design it away or you could add to the design. You could like, but if you just sit back and let the design happen, that's futuristic. There's no such thing as the future. It's just the now and the creative minds that are coming up with concepts to materialize, like so, that are plausible. If I said that vision in 1980, you'd be like, "You batshit crazy talking about robots broadcast."

Well, so, if we're living the matrix now.

Matrix?

Yeah, okay. If we're living the matrix now, what's the movie I should be watching to see what the future holds?

I wouldn't say we're living the matrix. We're living the Akashic records. There's a word in Aramaic called Abracadabra that means I create as I speak. AI is not invented, it's discovered. This dimensional math has been here long ass time ago. We just see it as product.

So I just want to say that my takeaway from having this conversation with you is that we should all think in song.

Or think in song means, we should all find the rhyme. And it doesn't have to rhyme with time, it just has to rhyme with heart. Passion, empathy, love, courage, audacity, ambition. Because if we are not trying to solve problems and AI starts solving problems, that's not the world you want.

Well, that seems like a perfect place to end. I definitely think, you know, solving problems from heart is definitely where we're going to be ending this lunch. Thank you so much for-

Thanks.