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While another person might worry about AI cannibalizing their industry, will.i.am sees enormous potential in AI to change everything: from how we create music to the way we work. will.i.am is a founding member of the Black Eyed Peas. Hes racked up nine Grammy Awards and written over 130 songs. Hes also the founder of FYI.AI, an AI-powered productivity app for creatives that allows them to message each other, video call, and chat with an AI to generate ideas. In this interview, premium subscribers will learn: The true purpose of AI for creatives (it’s not saving time) How to ground everything you do in supporting your community Why will.i.am balances his optimism with a desire for technological guardrails I catch will.i.am on a layover in London. Hes just wrapped up a concert with Shakira, en route to Saudi Arabia for what he calls Black Eyed Peas business. The week before, he was in India working on his partnership with chipmaker Qualcomm. I ask him how he manages to get enough sleep, and he looks me dead in the eye and says: On the plane. As if thats truly enough rest to power creative genius. On top of being an AI founder and world famous musician, will.i.am runs a foundation that provides educational opportunities to underserved youth. Hes also a tech investor with an uncanny ability to spot the next big thing: Hes made early investments in Open AI, Pinterest, Dropbox, and Anthropic. Most recently, in March, he launched that partnership with Qualcomm, where FYI.AI will be on its Snapdragon line of chips, which powers phones, PCs, and cars. As we talk, he circles through the airport, laying out his greatest fears and deepest hopes for AI. The sun is setting over London ushering in a new day, and will.i.am is rapping and rhyming, filled with an exuberance thats catching. He has an unwavering faith that despite the threat of AI stealing jobs and fears around misuse and lack of regulation, humanity will manage to use AI for the greater good, somehow finding the love. [Photo: Getty Images] Fast Company: How do you figure out what the next big thing for yourself is? Well, first, lets start with the word biglets refrain from using it. Sometimes, the thing youre chasing isnt big. Sometimes theyre just things you love. Sometimes they are pieces that help complete your puzzle. I don’t do things that don’t align with the main objective. Whats the main objective? I come from the inner city, and the inner city has low investment in education. Folks that look like meBlack and brown folksare on a school-to-prison pipeline. Sometimes cradle-to prison-pipeline. Most of my friends that I grew up with are either dead or in prison. The objective is to go back to my community, to ensure that there’s a different path. So I started [education nonprofit i.am. Angel Foundation] with just 65 kids. Now it serves about 15,000 students. If it doesn’t [show] folks that come from communities that resemble the conditions I come from what’s possible, then I won’t do it. I don’t like doing things just for checks. I don’t do things that don’t align with the main objective. Sometimes it’s a small thing, sometimes it’s a little thing that doesn’t paybut it adds. Youre a musician, investor, founder, and activist, among other roles. How do you think about career growth? Hip-hop. Hip-hop taught me to do that. Hip-hop was educational. It taught kids in my generation what they didn’t teach us in school. It taught us how to be a community. I learned music not because of school, but because of hip-hop. They didnt even have music programs in a lot of these inner cities, but hip-hop became my Calvary. I’m so happy I was raised in that era of hip-hop when its foundations were about community outreachgiving kids in the inner city a path away from violence. Now its turned into glorifying the drug dealers. As matter of fact, what got me into tech was a website called Okayplayer, which [was founded by] Questlove. [Editors note: Okayplayer was an early online musical community founded in 1999. It was one of the first places where fans could interact directly with artists.] He was a part of that website before MySpace, before Facebook, before Friendster. We all used to go on that in like 1999, 2000, 2001 and that’s how we all connected and in chat rooms. My handle was peasforyou. This was our social media. What [also] got me into technology? Well, the sampler. I play the computer. I don’t play an instrument. I played a fucking computer. All the folks that make beats as their instrument, are all hyper technological. Dr Dre is a beat maker. Arabian Prince is a beat maker. Theyre all tech-leaning. Youre the founder of an AI company. But how do you think AI will end up impacting the music community? Imagine its 1825. The record industry didnt exist then. So you listened to music in your home, or you had to have a band play it, or you go to the theatre or opera, or church. It wasnt available on the ready. Then, when the record industry came along, song form had to change, because there was a limited amount of information you could put on the lacquer. Song structure had to change. So, learning from this shift: You could use your imagination to dream up the next industry. Yes, AI is a great mimic. It could spit out a whole bunch of shit in five minutes that took us hours to do. But is that what it’s supposed to do? Just like a regurgitation of imagination, regurgitation of emotion? Or are you supposed to utilize this technology to dream some shit up that never existed? [Back in the day] do you think motherfuckers was like, yo, hip-hop music? As a matter of fact, they’re like, that aint music. How you say that’s music? You sample other people’s music. If there’s any genre that is aligned with AI’s principles, it would be hip-hop. We call them samples; AI calls them data sets. I could take this song and that song and this song and that songand make a new sog. Oh, that kind of sounds like fucking AI, doesn’t it? What if instead of this neural network, it’s a simulated neural network. It’s a fusion model. Right now is the time to dream up some new fucking shit. I’m excited all the time. I wake up every day like, let’s create. Its this energy that we could use for good. We can solve problems and identify how to be helpful to communities. We can dig deep inside and be a fucking light. Help folks in the darkness. Thats what keeps me leaping out of bed every single day. I love the hope here. But what advice do you have to people who are afraid of losing their jobs because of AI? Its a really good question. That is something to be concerned about: job replacement, job displacement, and this side of the tsunami thats coming. A lot of white-collar jobs are threatened, [as well as] blue-collar jobs. But theres other jobs that people can do that didn’t exist yesterday. Somebody had to dream that stuff up. Well, let’s start dreaming up some shit. AI doesn’t imagine. AI doesn’t dream shit up. We do that. So if reality is not shipping 100%, and there’s room for imagination and dream, fucking bring on the dreamers. Fund the big ideas. Go. Dream up some shit. Make sure that everybody can work, though. Because if you leave it to the corporations, they dont care. That’s how we got here in the first place. So we’re here because they lead with greed. I do have some boogeymen, some boogie woogies, where Im like, I dont know the answer to that. Let me stay optimistic. What boogie woogies do you have? You know, music was hijacked. Hip-hop was turned into prison commercials. The movement was taken over. Every time theres progress, theres this trip wire of regress. Right now, people live on the device. They trust the machine. They dont even know their digital life is not more valuable than their analog life. I see the concernsanyone can buy your data to manipulate you. We need some regulations so the data practices of the past are not borrowed right now. So no matter how optimistic I get, I think we need some help. We need someone thinking about how to ensure were safe. Look at the city over there, the beautiful bridge, the carsthey feel safe. I dont have to worry about standing in the middle of the road, because I know someone is going to slow down. I hope we get governance and guidance. To drive a car, I have to have a license. But in this AI space, no one, not even me, had to take a basic test to make sure you have the right principles in place to deploy products where people are safe, and your moral compass isnt leading with greed. Regulations should not stifle innovation. But lets make sure there arent whackos behind the wheel.
Category:
E-Commerce
Floridas Everglades are teeming with gigantic, invasive snakes, but a fluffy, high-tech solution is poised to help. The state is turning to robotic stuffed rabbits to help trap invasive Burmese pythons, which are disrupting the states fragile wetland ecosystems and harming its native species by gobbling up food sources. Florida is regularly on the hunt for the pythons due to the threat they pose to the states furry fauna, much of which count as prey for the huge snakes. The University of Florida and the South Florida Water Management District developed the python-hunting tech this year, crafting remote-controlled, solar-powered stuffed rabbits that look and even smell like the real thing. The robo-rabbits also emit a realistic heat signature, sending the message to heat-sensing snakes in nearby swamps that dinner is served. Unbeknownst to the snakes, the robotic rabbits are also equipped with cameras that scan for pythons who have taken an interest in them. When one of the invasive snakes is spotted, an alert prompts the district to send out a special python removal agent to take care of business. Invasive pythons are one of the most destructive and harmful species in Americas Everglades, according to the South Florida Water Management District’s website. Their aggressive predation on native wildlife robs panthers, raptors, bobcats, and other native predators of their primary food sources. The python problem is so bad that the state hosts an annual hunt, known as the Florida Python Challenge. This year, the 10-day competition attracted 934 python hunters from 30 states around the country. Last month, the participants culled 294 invasive pythons, adding to the 1,400 removed since the contest first launched in 2013. A single competitor took home the $10,000 grand prize this summer by removing 60 Burmese pythonsquite a feat, considering that the huge nonvenomous snakes can reach between 6 and 9 feet long on average. Firearms arent allowed in the contest, so contestants manage to wrangle the snakes by hand.
Category:
E-Commerce
Bitcoin has doubled its value and soared to mind-boggling highs in the last year, but the king of cryptocurrency stumbled a bit in late August. The digital coin dipped to a 30-day low around $108,000 on Friday, down from a record high of $124,457 mid-month. A few factors are likely at work in the coins dip. Why is Bitcoin dipping? Cryptocurrency traders have observed activity this week from a Bitcoin whale someone holding a huge position in a given coin that on its own might be enough to move markets. When a whale moves their assets around, the size of the trade can send a coin up or down and spook onlookers, who might be inclined to follow suit. Earlier this week, one whale sold 24,000 Bitcoin worth $2.7 billion in a single day. Another trader with a massive position in Bitcoin was just spotted buying up Ethereum, the cryptocurrency with the second highest market capitalization. When large positions flow out from Bitcoin and into Ethereum, it can send the former down and the latter up particularly if the broader crypto market chases the big movers. Beyond big trades and whale moves, cryptocurrency is affected by broader macroeconomic factors just like everything else. President Trumps reelection sent Bitcoin on a tear late last year, but high interest rates still temper interest in digital coins. If the Fed lowers interest rates and borrowing cash gets cheaper, money is likely to flow into riskier investments like Bitcoin. In a highly anticipated speech late last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled that rate cuts could be on the way next month. Powell pointed to slowing economic growth in the first half of the year, but remains cautious over the effects of Trumps tariffs on the Feds quest to quell inflation. All of these factors influence traditional stocks and their chaotic counterpart, the cryptocurrency market. If Bitcoins late-summer slump seems foreboding, a glance at a price chart on a longer timeline should dispel any concerns: A year ago, BTC was trading for less than $60,000.
Category:
E-Commerce
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