‘Time to dream up some new’: will.i.am believes AI could be the next hip-hop

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. He’s racked up nine Grammy Awards and written over 130 songs. He’s 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. He’s 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 that’s 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. He’s also a tech investor with an uncanny ability to spot the next big thing: He’s 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 that’s 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. 

Fast Company: How do you figure out what the next big thing for yourself is?

Well, first, let’s start with the word “big”—let’s refrain from using it. Sometimes, the thing you’re chasing isn’t big. Sometimes they’re 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.

What’s the main objective?

I come from the inner city, and the inner city has low investment in education. Folks that look like me—Black and brown folks—are 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 pay—but it adds.

You’re 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 didn’t 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 outreach—giving kids in the inner city a path away from violence. Now it’s 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. [Editor’s 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. They’re all tech-leaning. 

You’re the founder of an AI company. But how do you think AI will end up impacting the music community?

Imagine it’s 1825. The record industry didn’t 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 wasn’t 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 ain’t 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 song—and make a new song. 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.” It’s 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. That’s 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?

It’s a really good question. That is something to be concerned about: job replacement, job displacement, and this side of the tsunami that’s coming. A lot of white-collar jobs are threatened, [as well as] blue-collar jobs.

But there’s 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 don’t 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 I’m like, “I don’t 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 there’s progress, there’s this trip wire of regress.

Right now, people live on the device. They trust the machine. They don’t even know their digital life is not more valuable than their analog life. I see the concerns—anyone 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 we’re safe. Look at the city over there, the beautiful bridge, the cars—they feel safe. I don’t 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 isn’t leading with greed. 

Regulations should not stifle innovation. But  let’s make sure there aren’t whackos behind the wheel.