What drives his entrepreneurial spirit in technology is his work as a philanthropist, where he encourages inner-city, disadvantaged youth to apply themselves in STEM fields so they can prepare themselves for an AI, autonomous, robotic and highly technical tomorrow. He is also simultaneously a creative advisor, futurist and artist, working fluidly in a cross-disciplinary career. Will.i.am talks about unlocking everybody's innate creative potential and the future of creative collaboration with AI.
Can you talk about your perspective of AI and technology and how it is going to impact the creative industry?
Will.i.am: It's inevitable that it will render a lot of jobs obsolete. That's the unfortunate side. But if you're a hyper creative, then you're going to unearth and erect not only new jobs, but new industries with the technology. It all depends on what side of creativity you sit on. For example, if you were a drummer in the 70s, in the 90s humans were not on the radio playing drums. It was a drum machine. And in 2023, on any playlist, on any top 10 humans are definitely not keeping time playing drum. But are creatives creating beautiful genres of music where one single person is conducting and composing an entire orchestra on these platforms? Yes. The unfortunate side is humans keeping time, working the way we used to, is not what we consider popular music. And that's an unfortunate reality. But has popular music spread across different corners of the earth because of the technology? Yes, it has. Is there a new type of songwriter and producer? Yes, there is. Is AI going to change our engagement with music? Yes, it will. For example, if it was 1723, your idea of music was going to a cathedral, an opera, and watching an orchestra be conducted, or you played some instrument at home for hobby. In 1923 the recorded industry came and changed the whole concept of what a song was. A song was now a three-minute jingle compared to like a whole entire symphony or opera. Popular music did that because of the limitation of recording. Thanks to an awesome inventor, entrepreneur named Thomas Edison, who created the Gramophone, which is now our Grammy Award.
Technology was always there to help define and decide what an industry was and wasn't, and how to perforate a genre or a hobby. And this new technology is beyond a Gramophone, is beyond a record player, beyond a CD. So why are we taking an industry's format? Don't forget, recorded music is fairly new compared to the concept of music. So why we take in this limited way of songwriting and put it on AI? Shouldn't we be imagining what a song is going to be for this new era? We should be thinking more ways to what is music? What is your engagement? Is it personalized for you? So, I'm on the side of like let's freaking imagine and let's dream up new ways.
You're doing incredible creative work with Mercedes-Benz and the Formula One. You're launching a new tech platform to really broaden access to creativity and creative tools. So outside of music, are you as confident of the impact of technology and AI as you are inside the music industry?
Will.i.am: It's going to change law, finance, education, white-collar jobs as a whole. It's going to change transportation, retail and blue-collar jobs too. But it's also going to solve a lot of problems that humans ignored. I'm from the projects of East Los Angeles. There's been a lot of crime. AI and machines didn't do that. People did that. For underdeveloped communities we never point out who the developer or who the server was. AI didn't do that. People did that. The divide of who gets equal opportunities or education. AI didn't do that. There's been people that have been in harm's way because they didn't have opportunities, because their neighborhood was zoned poorly, because they didn't have financial literacy, because weapons were brought into their neighborhood. How did military weapons end up in the hood in the first place? People did that. Greed did that. Hate did that. So now here's a tool that could liberate folks, that could be the cavalry to how they solve their problems from their perspective themselves. And when you do that, new types of careers are going to come, new industries are going to come. Every time you solve a problem, jobs come. I think the jobs of tomorrow are going to come from the Ghana’s of the world, the Nigeria’s of the world, the Brazil’s of the world, it's going to come from the areas that people have neglected this whole time.
Please share with the audience your experience of being a creator during the early days of lockdown and how the idea to build something like FYI came about?
Will.i.am: During 2020, we were all experiencing the same thing. We're in our homes, working from home, learning from home, just being there all the time. And I realized that the creative community were working over five different tools just to get work done. We were on a messenger, like WhatsApp, then we had a Dropbox, but to send large files on WhatsApp or on Telegram, you needed a WeTransfer. But if it was too big, you couldn't open it in a messenger, you had to send it via email. So that's a messenger, a file sending and a file storage. Then you had email, and then to have a conversation with the group you needed to Zoom. And then sometime in 2022, you had an AI Platform, ChatGPT1, and then two. So, there were six different products if you're a creative. So, I wanted to solve a problem that I saw that a lot of folks in my community saw and to make a creative tool for creatives, by creatives, to allow folks and liberate them to keep all their conversations in one place, ensure that their data and their assets are safe.
And how was the experience like shifting from an entertainer to a founder and CEO of a tech company platform?
Will.i.am: The vision of the future is that artists are not just going to be entertainers. Rihanna is not just a singer. If Revlon was to see today, they never would have just let Fenty happen accidentally. Rihanna is an industry. Jay -Z is an industry. The world of tomorrow's entertainers is going to be more like Rihanna. Right now, it's hard to start a tech communication AI company from somebody that came from the hood, because they look at you sideways, but it's not impossible. We're solving a problem and tomorrow's big industries are going to come from other rural areas. I got tired of wishing and hoping. I went out and put a team together to solve this vision and this problem that I had and funded it. We have amazing folks on our cap table, supporters like IBM who's been there from the jump. We have an amazing product and great partners in support. But it is hard if right now there's not a lot of folks that look like me in the world of AI and communications and that founded companies. But that's not for long, there's going to be whole monsoon tsunami of tomorrow's innovators that come from pockets of the world that you never thought. You are going to see of folks that come from the entertainment world that stand up and do awesome projects by putting teams together.