Behind The Tech with Kevin Scott - will.i.am, Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Musician, and Producer

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

will.i.am is most well-known as the founder and lead member of the Black Eyed Peas. Simultaneously, he is also an entrepreneur and Founder & CEO of FYI.AI, a Web 3.0 AI messenger, where he spends a lot of his time investing in software and operating systems incorporating AI, natural language understanding, and voice computing. In this episode, Kevin and will.i.am discuss his upbringing and how he got interested in technology, his optimism around AI and where it’s going (especially in creative fields), how he started his foundation providing STEAM education for disadvantaged youth, and much more.  This episode includes strong language and may not be appropriate for all audiences. will.i.am | FYI.AI  will.i.am also co-hosts the Changemakers podcast with Omar Abbosh. Check it out here. Kevin Scott   Behind the Tech with Kevin Scott  Discover and listen to other Microsoft Podcasts. 

Yeah, stay in your lane means that you're in a car on a road. I'm in a freaking rocket ship, and the lane is the sky. There's no lines up in that. There's no freaking lanes there. It's like I could go anywhere. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Behind the sky. There's no lines up in that. There's no freaking lanes there. It's like I could go anywhere. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Behind the Tech. I'm your host, Kevin Scott, Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft. In this podcast, we're going to get behind the tech. We'll talk with some of the people who have made our modern tech world possible and understand what motivated them to create what they did.

So join me to maybe learn a little bit about the history of computing and get a few behind-the-scenes insights into what's happening today. Stick around. Hello, and welcome to Behind the Tech. I'm co-host Christina Warren, Senior Developer Advocate at GitHub. And I'm Kevin Scott. And our guest today is Will I Am. He is, of course, the founder and lead member of Black Eyed Peas, but he's also an entrepreneur,

philanthropist, and producer. Yeah, I met Will relatively recently, even though he's been pretty involved in the tech community here in Silicon Valley for a while. And it was a really interesting first meeting because we met in the context of a gathering that was mostly about artificial intelligence, where the technology is and where it's headed. And my assumption was because he's an artist and he earns his living through writing songs, recording them, both in terms of their creativity and their economic opportunity if we make the right set of choices. worried about some of the risks, which I think are obvious, but it was just really interesting in that conversation. And hopefully that will be reflected in the interview that we're about to have. Just that optimism was really inspiring and encouraging. No, totally. I'm really looking forward to this conversation because, as you said like he's an artist and I think a lot of people still think of him in those terms because of all what he's done, but he has been

involved in the tech industry for a long time. And I think that that offers some interesting perspectives. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Let's do it. Will.i.am is a singer, songwriter, actor, record producer, and technology entrepreneur who is most well known as the founder and lead member of Black Eyed Peas. He's also an entrepreneur and the CEO of FYI, a Web 3.0 AI messenger. He invests in software and operating systems incorporating AI, natural language understanding, and voice computing. He does a lot of work to encourage inner city disadvantaged youth to apply themselves in STEAM fields so they can prepare themselves for an AI, autonomous, robotic, and highly technical tomorrow.

Will.i.am, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks, Kev. It's good to be here. Sorry for calling you, Kev, because we spend so much time at the Vatican. I feel like I've known you since high school. So I'm like, yo, what up, Kev? Yeah, Kev is great. I love it.

So the thing that I would love to start with is how you got interested in science and technology in the first place. Was it when you were a kid um yeah i went to a school called britwood science magnet and we were so fortunate and blessed to have apple 2cs back in the 80s and i had like oceanography class, physics. We had advanced placement. I was trying to, I tried my hardest to get into that, but I couldn't. But computer, oceanography, physics was, I was able to get into those classes. And I was first through sixth grade. And I loved computer lab.

I love Mr. Lipwalk's class and Miss Smolin's class in oceanography. So that was my forte in that realm of STEM. At the time, it was just magnet. But if it was today, that would be a STEM school. And who did you have encouraging you to do this stuff? Like, were your parents in technology-related professions? Was there anybody in your community? Like, where did the motivation come from,

or it was just entirely in you? No, my mom's arts and craft was like come on let's do arts and craft that was like yeah my mom's way of like keeping us you know focused and out of trouble because i grew up in a pretty bad neighborhood so arts and craft was like you know sharpening up my creative skills and then going to school coming back with like my i gotta make a volcano. I got to make a freaking solar system with the styrofoam. I got to, you know, I got to do work.

Can we take me to the library to find another computer? We can never do that. So I didn't really get good grades there, but, but yeah, it was my mom and her brave, how brave she was to send me to school two hours away from the ghetto to and from like an hour and a half away from the ghetto that I was from. And so that was, uh, this magnet school was first through sixth grade.

Uh, and so, yeah, w where, where did the interest go from, from there? So I had this teacher named Mr. Wright, and this man changed my life because I was hyperactive as a kid. And still, as an adult, he put the seed to say, you know, your creativity, you have a curious mind, you're super creative, focus on your creativity. And I thank Mr. Wright for that reminder of what my superpower could be if I was to focus on it. So Mr. Wright, and then Ms. Montez when I got into high school. So these two teachers really changed my life. You know, a nudge, acknowledgement, mentorship goes a long way, especially for kids that are coming from the inner city and going to, you know, the rich neighborhoods. That type of encouragement that I see you i see your strengths um and that that's what i

realized that my uh my currency even though i was poor my currency was my creativity that is what separated me from you know my peers was my imagination my ability to materialize ideas you know i want to talk about that a little bit because this is one of the recurring themes in the folks that we talk to. Almost everyone who is successful in technology has a little bit of that same creative impulse that I think recording artists have around creativity. And it feels to me like the creativity is this really interesting continuum. And you've just done sort of extraordinary things that not having yourself pigeonholed into like one creative thing. Was that a thing that came natural to you?

Because I think there's a lot of pressure to, you know, for folks to stay in their lanes. Yeah. Stay in your lane means that you're on a, in a car on a road. I'm in a freaking rocket ship and the lane is the sky. There's no lines up in that. Like there's no freaking lanes there. It's like, I could go anywhere when you, when you, if you're a bird, if you're a, if you're a spaceship,

you could go anywhere, anywhere you want. And that, that go anywhere you want with your imagination, your creativity. That seed again, that mentorship, that encouragement, Jimmy Iovine was that person for me. Before Jimmy Iovine, it was Eazy-E. So I had a record deal in the 11th grade. I was signed to Eazy-E from NWA and the record company was Ruthless Records. And even though I come from the inner city, a gang is right smack in the core of the neighborhood I was from. I dressed, you know, differently. I didn't dress in gang attire.

And although I was signed to a gangster record company, Eazy-E was like, you're different. Don't change who you are for anybody. And so that type of like acknowledgement, I see you for who you are. Your creativity is your authenticity. It's your badge. It's your badge of entry. It's your credentials. It's your visa. And then from Jimmy Iovine acknowledging that, you got different ideas. I love your ideas. That's what gave me the fearlessness to make friends with people like Jim Basile at RIM. I would fly up to Waterloo and sit with Jim Basile and Mike when BlackBerry was was like the kings of mobility, mobile communication. Paul Jacobs at Qualcomm. These folks acknowledging my ideas in early 2000s, like 2006, 7, 8.

And then I met this guy by the name of Joe Sciroda at Ogra V. So those five people, Eazy-E. How does Eazy-E and Paul Jacobs, what do they have to do with each other? Me, right? So Eazy-E, Jimmy Iovine, Paul Jacobs, Jim Basile, and Joe Sciarotta. These cats are the ones that were, I acknowledge your creative contributions because they're not just ideas, they're a materialization path. Here's a great idea, here's a way to execute it, and here's how it could impact. So that type of encouragement led me to create this thing called Yes We Can Song for the Obama administration that helped him get elected in 2008. It helped me come up with this concept that I pitched this idea to Jim Basile once. I'm like, hey, I know you got, I got a lot of songs on my hard drive that are, that would probably never

come out. And I know you got the new Blackberry Torch and I know you got some on the shelf that are incomplete. Can you give me the guts? And I'll design like artist phones. I need 600 of them of incomplete phones. And I'll do new casings and I'll bedazzle them. I'll put the gold casing on them. Well, the gold casing is going to interfere with the antennas. I was like, no, no, no.

I'll figure out a way to do that. So this is 2007. He gave me like 300 incomplete phones. And he was like, just make sure you get a diamond one for my wife. And I was like, hey, I'm going to go get the music, the universal catalog, and let's start BlackBerry Music like Apple has iTunes. And so Jimmy Iovine gave me the catalog to take to Blackberry to create Blackberry music. The result is it never happened, but still, uh, it gave me the confidence. Like I could meet these CEOs. I could have ideas and I can materialize them. Um, and that, that, that's

what led to a program that I pitched to Moutard Kent at Coca-Cola called EcoCycle. I said, Hey, Coca-Cola companies as big as Coca-Cola should be verbs in society. If you don't believe me, Google it. And if Google's a verb, Coca-Cola's verb should be Coke in reverse, E-K-O-C for EcoCycle, eco-consumption, eco-collaboration, eco-community. And we're going to take your byproducts, your past plastics, create a new base cloth and license them to other companies to execute their sustainability efforts. EcoCycle Beats Headphones was our first product, EcoCycle Levi Jeans, and the very EcoCycle that

is Coke's verb. And so we launched that. And then from there, I got a job working at Intel with Paul Ottenelli, rest in peace, and the Futurist Department. And nothing could hold me from that. I was a part of Beats from the beginning, pitched Jimmy an idea like, hey, let's make our own hardware. And we can use our music to sell our own stuff. Like, why are we selling everybody else's stuff? Let's sell our own shit. And so Beats was started. I love contributing and being a partner, whether I'm silent or vocal. In this case, I was silent, but extremely vocal in the meetings and help navigate. And we built a massive company and culture and community with Beats. But yeah, it's that fearlessness. But it starts with somebody acknowledging and encouraging. So how do you...

So I think fearlessness is like a really, really good word to focus on here. Because a lot of people who do creative things fail. The fear of failure is a thing that prevents them from really doing ambitious things or even getting to the finish line on things that might be really good and successful. I just wonder how you have conquered that yourself and like advice that you've got for other creative

folks about how do you, you know, how do you do and like, if you're being ambitious enough, right, you are going to fail. Like, it never failing is probably a sign that you're, you know, you're not trying as hard as you possibly could yeah so failing that shouldn't be your kryptonite like for example i i fell down no just play on words i fell down when i was a little kid and i and i scarred here and the scar tissue created like a little keloid. So let's say that the way that healed is a failure. It didn't stop the rest of my body from creating scabs and growing skin in a way to heal.

Like my body is not afraid of failure. Even though I could see that clearly there, there's a little keloid there that probably didn't heal seamlessly. There's some scars that I have where I can't see how it recovered. But then there's some scars that I have where I can see that it probably didn't scar up right, heal right. I see the visible mark. So what? Does that stop my body from trying to fix itself when I cut myself? No. So why should the same thing happen for my creative process?

My body does a really good job telling me that it's doing what it does regardless of failure. So why restrict myself and allow failure to be my kryptonite? The folks that do that, we live in a world where people are afraid to fail. That means you make no progress. That means you're sitting down somewhere comfortable doing nothing, right? Because you're afraid of what people might think. Your body is not afraid of what other organs might think when it's going through trauma based on your decisions that you put on your body. You drink alcohol, you're messing your liver up. You think your liver's like, I don't want the kidneys to know that I might fuck up. But that's not how the body works. So why does your mind work that way? Why does your creative endeavors work that way? You should try to execute your aspirations and how you

materialize your dreams the way natural systems do. Nature isn't afraid of failure. Your body's not afraid of failure. Why? Why are you? Yeah. So what is your creative process look like? So I and I know, if you ask that question to 1000 different creators, you get 1000 different answers, you know, like, do you? Do you have a place that you go? Do you have music that you listen to? Do you have a place that you go? Do you have music that you listen to? Do you have a routine that you exercise? Do you have people that you go talk to?

All of the above? None of the above? No. My creative process is like breathing. It's like inhale, exhale. I don't even... Sometimes I'm thinking about breathing, and then once I start thinking about breathing, breathing becomes pretty boring.

And the more that I allow creativity to be as natural as breathing, it's just life. I never have writer's block. Because there's no such thing as that. Either the shit is good or the shit is bad. Turns out shit grows grass. Um, so who gives a fuck? No, that sounds like something my dad would say.

Uh, like that's awesome. Like who cares? Like one day you're going to have some good stuff. But some days you're going to have some bad stuff. You just got to keep making stuff. To push on this a little bit, how do you decide what's good enough to present to other people? That's when you start getting critical on your own stuff. If you could present something that you know is bad,

you explain, here's what I was going through when I made this. And I needed to let this out because it's a reflection of what I was going through. Then there's no such thing as good or bad because somebody might like that. What's good or bad is relative. Somebody could say, I don't know. I don't like John Coltrane.

That frequency of the saxophone and the brass really hurts my tinnitus. Or sometimes people could be like, I really like the sound of the orchestra. Tuning, that's the most relaxing, calming experience. I don't really like the songs there, but the tuning of the orchestra, oof, that really gets me. And after that, I'm gone. Who cares what the orchestra's playing?

I just wanted to hear the tuning. I like the way the orchestra sounds tuning. It's like a meditational, they don't even know they're freaking bringing peace to me. They're just tuning their instrument. And it's the most soothing sound that you could ever hear. People getting in order. People getting ready for perfection. It sounds beautiful when they do it together. And so how important is performance to what you do?

Performance is expression. It's like, it's therapeutic. It's, I don't like to rehearse. Rehearsing is like, okay, we're going to mess up. And then, then it's not fun. But if we just go out there and wing it and improv, we're going to discover some stuff.

And if I mess up, that's just funny. And so the audience is having fun because you're having fun. And the audience is mesmerized about the fearlessness of like, hey, let's just go and figure it out. That's what I love the most. the audience is mesmerized about the fearlessness of like, Hey, let's just,

you just have, you just go and figure it out. That's what I love the most is to be thrown into a situation and have to improv because I'm not thinking anymore. I'm just breathing. The adrenaline is doing is my energy. My, my, uh,

my dodging from obstacles is the art. Yeah, that's awesome. So let, let's, uh, let's switch a little bit to, to technology. So you, you've been thinking about artificial intelligence for a while, along with a whole bunch of other technology things. Uh, you've got this company now called, got this company now called FYI that is doing some super interesting stuff. What interested you in the first place about AI and why go start a company using these tools to do what you're doing? There was a professor by the name of Professor Patrick Winston at MIT. And I got introduced to him by a guy by the name of Alan Hardstone. And in 2004, 2005, I was in Boston and Alan Hardstone took me to the media lab

at MIT. And then he introduced me to his favorite professor, who was Professor Patrick Winston. And Professor Patrick Winston was like this amazing magnetic personality, and he led the AI lab there at MIT. And he was like, hey, anytime you're in Boston, you could always sit in my class. And even though I liked other parts of the Media Lab, that offering of like, hey, whenever you're here, come check it out. So every time I would go to MIT, I would go sit into Professor Patrick Winston's class from 2005, 6, 7, 8, 9. Even if it was like once a quarter, I would go and hang out with him.

And that's the guy that got me into AI. Just the idea of what the computer will be capable of. And I'm a musician because of the computer. I'm not a musician because I play like John Legend. I'm not a musician because I sing like John Legend or I dance like Michael Jackson or play the guitar and every single instrument like Prince. I'm a musician because at one point in time,

I say at one point in time because I saw some shit. I saw some shit that just blew my brain in a good way. At one point in time, my ideas to get them out into the world required me to sit at a computer and program the computer to make music. And the computer is my instrument. And then sitting with Professor Patrick Winston, and I told him that, he was like, hey, what instrument do you play? I was like, I don't really play instruments. I play the computer. He was like, what do you mean by that? I was like, well, I make music on computers and computers only. I mean, I used to make music on tape, like with reel-to-reels

and splicing tape and telling the band like no make play a little tighter um making loops on on tape but then the computer became more efficient and so he was like oh that's interesting you know computers what do you think about what do you know about ray kurzweil i was like oh ray kurzweil you mean the guy that wait the the freaking synthesizer is because of a guy that used to make so then i've studied on ray kurzweil i'm like yo this ray kurzweil guy is freaking amazing and then the vision that he had way back then of computers being able to make music on its own is what got me to like really dive into ai and so in in 2010, there's this video out there of Black IPs in 2010, in the beginning of a video called I'ma Be Rockin' That Body, I said, hey, this is

what's going to take Black IPs into the future. This machine right here, you type in lyrics and the machine will sing and make the beats and do everything. This machine right here you type in lyrics and the machine will sing and make the beats and do everything this machine right here in 2010 and it's kind of similar to what I saw last month and I saw the most amazing piece of technology where I heard the best song I've ever written and recorded that I never recorded or wrote. And it coughed it up in less than a couple of minutes, like a minute. And it was pretty accurate to my writing process, my quirkiness, my style. And it made me realize like, oh shit, a new industry needs to be created it's like in the music industry there's three industries you have the recording industry the publishing industry

and the touring industry this fourth one is now about to emerge and and i hope a fourth industry is created because of the technology because if it Because if the record industry is the governor of it, I don't know if that's going to be good for artists. If the publishing industry is governing it, I don't know. Because the artists should own their immortal creative thumbprint. That should be there. And there needs to be an industry and a banking of your identity that's yours. So thank you, Professor Patrick Winston, wherever you are in the universe, spiritually, energetically, thank you for inspiring me to go down this path of ai i've invested in ai

companies i've built a couple of um solutions back in 2013 around natural language understanding natural language processing and machine learning um i put teams together acquire teams put teams together um white when we sold beats to htc that's what I did with my money was to go out and put teams together. We did some pretty cool things back in 2014 with a product called Anita. We would say things like, play Beyonce, what's going on with her? Does she have any shows coming up? Can you find sushi restaurants there um book a table for me and five people all starting with beyonce so it knows that beyonce is her and her the show the show where where there and there being a subset of the location of the concert then go off the app and make a

phone call on behalf of you and the five people that are not only just going to the concert but going to the sushi restaurant we did a lot of that in 2014. To our failure, didn't know how to commercialize that. But that didn't stop me from trying and trying and trying again.

And, you know, Silicon Valley and tech tell you fail fast. But if you're from the projects, you don't understand what fail fast means because you've been failing your whole life financially. Your circumstances have put you in a situation to where you didn't fail purposely.

Your configuration put you in a failure mark. So failing slow and learning and growing and having the tenacity to fucking just do it is where i come from um and i learned from that experience what the what the solutions that we built we then ended up selling a lot of the stuff that we did to bondage um so that that failure turned into some success but I love I love AI that's super

you may be the first person I've ever heard say fail slow and learn a lot and maybe that's an interesting new mantra for folks as long as you're not burning money the reason why they say fail fast is so you don't

burn through money. But fail slow, you know, you went through elementary, junior high school, high school, and the whole process is failing while advancing. Sometimes you get D's, sometimes you get F's. Some students, not every student

is an A student. But from my experience, it turns out that a lot of the kids that were failing are hiring the folks that were freaking getting As. So what does that mean? There's folks that work for me that I went to school with. I got Fs and Ds. But I excelled in an area that the school district didn't really, they didn't really support the music and what music actually is as a business, as an industry. Rihanna is not just a musician.

She is a freaking entrepreneur. Ask LVMH. Dr. Dre is a musician and producer. He is an entrepreneur. Ask Apple. $3 billion later. Musicians are not just, they sell other people's products. And when they realize the stunt, they're now competing directly with the folks that have no relationship with the audience.

They have no relationship with attention. So I learned that it's okay to fail. It's okay. You should not be embarrassed that you got it wrong because now you got it right. So why beat yourself up? Because you still know there's folks that got it right that aren't making money. There's people that got it wrong that are caking up. Yeah, bitch, I failed. But guess what? I'm balling. It's okay as long as you learn from the failure. And at FYI, I realized that creatives were working

off of five different products. We have a Dropbox and a WeTransfer and we're working off of Messenger because you can't send large files on Messenger so you have to use WeTransfer through email. But even those big files, you have to move off a phone to a laptop and you have to bash the Wi-Fi.

Your conversations are in comments and in email and on text thread. Your IP and your copyrights are vulnerable and compromised because you're across five different products. So I was like, let me create FYI for Focus Your Ideas and have a central place for a creative enterprise, the managing of the creative process with AI. So we have generative AI at the core of the product. It's your messenger, your digital asset manager,

your strategic partner, and a place for your team to engage with AI collectively. Not like AI here, like I was doing some shit here and I copy and pasted here. No, everyone on the same thread with AI chiming, bantering back and forth with AI to strategize and improve on creative flow, strategic flow for the projects that you're passionate about. So I want to talk a little bit more about this and about something that you said a few minutes ago, because I think with generative AI and maybe AI more broadly, there's this continuum of hope and artists that it will somehow or another demean their work or change their ability to earn a living from their creative output and creative efforts.

And on the other end of the spectrum, you have folks who think that generative AI is an incredible new tool, that it can be a partner to help unlock your creativity that can you know help you make things that weren't possible before as an artist and creator and maybe even thinking about it as a continuum is like the wrong thing maybe it's not an either or um but like it seems like you you and i've had a couple of conversations about this and you've got a very strong point of view here and like i i just love to love to hear you talk about that yeah so imagine this is 1970 and uh you're a drummer from a band that's pretty popular and you're a drummer that's coming up and you have aspirations as a drummer

and then like there was a drum machine but you weren't really threatened by the drum machine because it sounded like didn't really sound like drums. And then the 80s come around and the Lin-900 started sounding a little bit more realistic, but it was stiff and robotic. And then Prince really made some pretty awesome songs with the Lin-900. and then the Akai MPC-60 drum machine came, and now you could sample live drums and put the swing on it, and it kind of sounds realistic. And then 2000 comes around, and you're like, yo, fuck these drum machines, bro. All the songs on the radio are fucking drum machines. And the 70s was all human beings.

Tight. You had to be super precise and the drum machine ate up a lot of the freaking like drum time for the drummers on the radio and since then live drums on the radio and on streaming you don't hear no live drums anywhere on the radio but what happened was the drummer a a lot of them, became the producer because they were like, you know what, if this is the case, I'm going to learn this machine and I'm going to produce. And the role of the drummer, they made more money because the drummer never got publishing anyways because how can you, what's the publishing on drums?

So the drummer in the band always got the shitty end of the stick when it came to ownership of the song because what part did you write? I wrote this. Everybody says boom, clack, boom, clack. Yep, everybody says boom, clack, boom, clack. So when it came to how everyone participated, the drummer was always last. And that sucks. But the drum machine and producing on computers really empowered the drummer.

The same is for music, the whole entire package now. It's just drums. It's guitars, it's bass lines, it's freaking chord progressions, ensembles, like orchestral. Everything of music is now going through what the drummer went through in the 70s to the 2000s. Now, the guy with the idea, the girl with the idea, the person with the idea, now they don't need the whole entire studio. They don't need a whole entire band.

They just need their idea and the machine will supercharge them the way the drum machine and the DAW supercharge the drummer. That's the optimistic point of it all. Then there's like a bunch of negative stuff uh that i don't even want to entertain because i think we what we should be doing with ai is not just to augment yesterday yes it's going to uh you know render how we used to do things kind of obsolete or create new ways of doing things that undermine like how we used to do things kind of obsolete or create new ways of doing things that undermine like how we used to get paid. There's going to be new ways that we get paid.

A song is going to be a lot deeper right now, but MTV said, hey, now don't just write the song, do a video. That video used to be just promotion. If you wanted to go and sing and you're from LA, but you want to tour all of America. Other locations were like, well, send me a demo of what your show is going to be and I could put you on TV. So they would do that promo clip that MPV hijacked and said, these are videos. Those are promo clips. It was never a part of what a record contract was to be. And a record contract was based on the limitation of lacquer. And even though we had technology like mini discs and CDs,

there were no more limitations. Music is still composed as if there were limited space on a disc. A song is 3 minutes and 33 seconds, an album is 12 songs on it, just because of the RPMs, 33 that went around the record, and the tempos of every pop song was limited. So even with this advanced technology that we have, it's still basing it on limited. So that means you have to reimagine what

a song is, just like they reimagined what a song was from the 1800s when it was just theater and opera. When it came to the recording industry, they're like, okay, okay, we got to change a different song format here. Muddy Waters, that song is too long. I need you to shorten it.

Because when they would sing, the blues, they would sing there was no time limit. They would just go to a bar. You hear somebody sing and they sung for fucking hours. A song is like a reduction of the song sequence because of a limitation of the technology. So that means with AI and AI music, somebody has to reimagine what the fuck a song is. It's a discussion. It's a place for you to put your memories.

A place for the song to alter based on your mood. Like, I got a feeling is not just for... What's the version of I got a feeling when you're pissed? I just wrote the one when you're optimistic.

Where's the love? It's like when something goes wrong what about when something is right like and in their songs like boom boom pow they're about nothing hey what's what's boom about i don't know nothing like it's describing the song this song is promoting the song that I wrote. What song? This one right here that I'm singing. Which is a crazy concept of songwriting. Like, what are you going to write about? I don't really know what I'm going to write about this song I'm writing.

But you have to change AI. It's an opportunity to reimagine what a song is. To reimagine what it means in your life. to reimagine what it means to the world where it's discussion-based. We need to inspire the creative community to use AI not just for entertainment, but to reimagine the world. Tomorrow's industries are what? Tomorrow's jobs are what? If AI is going to replace jobs, it's going to create new jobs. So shouldn't the creative community also be tasked to imagine what tomorrow is with it? Or are we just going to freaking pretend that we're going to be making songs forever for business like we used to. You're going to be making experiences with it. You're going to be scoring moments in different ways of scoring moments,

but it isn't going to look anything like yesterday. No. Yeah, that's a super compelling vision. So we're running out of time here, and I want to ask you one last thing. One of the most inspiring things that I think you do is how you are giving back to kids in historically disadvantaged communities and trying to help them get a leg up. It's just really amazing work and I'd love understand like why you decided to do that and like why you decided to focus on, uh, steam education, uh, for these, uh, for these kids. Yeah. So it was, um, 2005.

Somebody was like, Hey, what do you want to do for your birthday? I'm like, I don't know. I don't want to party. I think I want to go out to Indonesia. Did you see that tsunami that just happened there? I think I want to go out there and play a role to helping folks recover from that. So I flew out to Indonesia to Bande Aceh with UNICEF to do a tsunami relief, what I did for my birthday, March 15th, 2005. And while I was there, I was like, wait, there's a tsunami every day in my neighborhood, a tsunami of neglect, tsunami of police brutality, a tsunami of, you know, no opportunity, low investment on their education, a tsunami of like, fueling an industry that they don't even know they're fueling. And that is correctional facilities. Just follow the investment. Wherever there's a kid that's

getting $5,000 a year for their education, they're subject to going in and out of juvenile hall and ending up in some privately owned prison. And that's messed up. And so I saw that in 2005 as I was out there doing tsunami relief, and I said, you know, I need to go back to my neighborhood. And so in 2008, I started the I Am Angel Foundation after I did Yes We Can to help get Obama elected. I then had the honors of sitting next to General Colin Powell. I said, hey, you know, now that Obama's elected, what does a person like me, what do you think I should do to keep the momentum? He was like, if I were you, Will, I would focus on the neighborhood that you come from. You're not going to get anything to stop you from helping out in your community. So I went back to my neighborhood.

I started a program in partnership with Lorraine Powell Jobs. I asked her if she could bring her college track to the neighborhood. And she was like, you know, we're only in the Bay Area. We never intended on leaving the Bay Area. But if you want to do it, it's a $10 million commitment. And at that point in time, I didn't have that much money to commit $10 million if I raise it or not. So I was like, you know what? I'll do it. What's the worst that's going to happen? I try it. It doesn't work out. And then have to figure out how to stop the program. So I signed up even though I was facing a potential fail. And I said, hey, but I just don't want to send kids from the inner city to college so they graduate with debt and a diploma. That's the worst thing for inner city kids.

So I want to surround the program with computer science and robotics. So that way when they graduate, there's jobs waiting for them and they have the ability to create new jobs. That was my gut in 2008. That turned out to be so successful that my program is the highest performing program out of all of Lorraine Powell Jobs' college tracks. So the IM College Track in Boyle Heights outperforms all the college tracks because of the combination of college prep, science, technology, engineering, mathematics. I started with 65 kids. Now, in 2023, we serve about 14,000 students in LA. We're in over 300 schools across LAUSD. Because I believe for me to get the education these kids are getting in the neighborhood, I had to drive an hour and a half out of my neighborhood. So what

does that do? That tells you that, man, I can't wait to make some money so I can leave my neighborhood. And everybody flees these neighborhoods. Brooklyn, people fled Brooklyn. Then it gets gentrified. So as people want to leave, new people come in and change the neighborhood. Then they can't even recognize the neighborhood they grew up in. They can't afford it. But if you educate people in the community where they are, and it's equal investment like it is in Brentwood and Palisades, where they're getting $10,000 for their education, 8 to 10 versus 3 to 6 in the hood. These kids learn to love their neighborhood and will aspire to change the neighborhood themselves because they have the skills to change the neighborhood themselves. It's going to get changed anyway. We see gentrification happening all around America, all around the world. Why can't it happen

from the inside? Why does it have to happen the other way? Where some folks that are affluent have the ability to be like, I'm going to move to the bad neighborhood. Why? Because it's cool. And then they feel like they're freaking living it because they're in the cool spots like Brooklyn because rappers rapped about Brooklyn, Compton, Boyle Heights, Inglewood. And then they come and change it. Why can't the people from the neighborhood change it? And the way they change it is by having the skill sets to do it themselves, solve the problems themselves, not waiting for humans who actually failed.

You talk about underdeveloped communities, underserved communities. That's failure because it's underserved and underdeveloped. And when you think of underserved and underdeveloped, no one ever points out the server or the developer. These people are invisible. There's just a title called underdeveloped and underserved. There's a person that's responsible for that underserving and underdeveloping. It's called zoning. It's called laws. There's people, names of folks that are responsible for South Bronx being South Bronx, Watts being Watts. It's not the people that live there,

the people that zone it, the people that have laws and regulations. I can't go and open up a liquor store in freaking Palisades and Beverly Hills and be like, yo, let's go to, let's go to Beverly Hills. Um, I'm going to open up a liquor store right next to a check cashing place and a strip club right here is buy this up. Guess what? They haven't allowed me to do that shit because it's not zoned for that. But why is it zoned in the hood? So that is the cocktail for underdeveloped. That's the cocktail for underserved because you're serving them some bullshit. Bad food, no financial literacy. So they get money, they get a check, cash a check.

Not build and save and grow wealth. And then buy bad food, get sick. That's not, that's by design. And so going to the neighborhood, showing folks like, hey, here's a skill set. A skill set that's been opened up that we all need as society. Suburbs need it. The hood needs it. America needs it. America needs it fast.

Yeah. America does need it fast. You are the most optimistic entrepreneur I know. And so I'm glad you're doing what you're doing. And you are certainly changing the world in a really positive way. So thank you for that. Thanks, Kev.

And, you know, a lot of people, they say like, you know, why are you so optimistic about AI? It's going to mess things up. And then I always respond where people in the hood, their lives have already been messed up and humans never came, the powers that be never came to un-mess it up for them. There's people in slums, people in favelas, people in provinces, their lives have already been destroyed. And maybe this time, this is their Calvary. This is their solution for them to be able to wrap themselves

around these skills to solve their problems that the powers that be have ignored the whole way through their whole lives, generations. And so, although there's concerns, those concerns are valid, and the concerns need regulations and governance. For example, I've created artificial intelligence solutions, and it's been awesome to work in this field. But I remember taking my written test to drive an automobile. I remember taking my physical test to have my driver's license, my Californian driver's license. I never had to take no test to create AI.

No written test, no physical test. That is an issue that anyone could just get some, right? That shouldn't be. I've made some money. I can go out and buy a fast car. I can go out and do what I, you know, try to get a car that's not

regulated in America to get, you know, registered and legal to be driven like a coasting egg to be driving around LA. I could do that, but I can't go out and get a freaking fighter jet and fly to New York because I want to. There's regulations to keep people from doing that, but not for AI. And as a person that's working in the field that loves the field, there's some things that I think we need to address soon. And I understand, like, don't regulate it to where it stifles innovation. No, that shouldn't be. But there's a balance between easy access and making sure that the folks that are working in it are doing it for the betterment of humanity. That's the,

at least can we do that one? At least can't we make sure that we're vetting folks that are working in the field and there's some type of like eyeballs that wackos ain't doing wacko shit with models we're not doing that one yeah that that does seem like a very reasonable thing will you know i'm saying uh i don't know that. That's the one that I'm playing in this field and working with awesome developers and creating solutions. And our these chat platforms that are encrypted, but I don't have a key to my account, to my data. But we changed that with FYI. Here's a key. Here's a key for all your data, which yours is yours. And yeah, we're really proud of our business model.

We're proud of the product that we have. It's live. It's officially live. We launched it on the May 4th and then we're going to grow from here. I remember like they said, why Messenger? Why did you choose a Messenger?

And I said, I remember I was in an interview and I said, they asked me why STEM? Why do I focus on STEM? And I said, imagine if WhatsApp came from Watts and it was called crew of people that had similar ideas. And I thought, well, how can I do that for everybody and help them focus their ideas? So FYI is focus your ideas, focus your intents with AI. And it came from a creative, four creatives that come from the hood. And we have, there's no tech company like that. And I'm proud of the folks that have joined it. We just hired some amazing folks that have come from the likes of Uber and Amazon and Apple because they see the vision that we have.

And lo and behold, just like any hurdle, our hurdle now is like VCs say, well, get some traction first. And that's the hurdle. And we're going to leap that hurdle. I see their skepticism. Like you're a musician. You're the founder and CEO of the company. But that's cool.

Because I think this gravity, this crunch, is the gravity and crunch that I need. And there's nothing wrong with proving people wrong. I've done it in my career in the past. And there's no way Black Eyed Peas are going to make money for a record company the way Celine Dion or Michael Jackson or the obvious ones. And we ended up doing that. But we did that by strategically aligning ourselves with people that understood the pathway to do that. So Jonathan Levine at Paradigm, Sam Goris, we strategically brought people into the fold to help us through the terrain. And we're doing that at FYI, right? So VCs, cloud and clear,

got you. We'll get traction. Cool. But the creative community has been ignored um we build everybody else's platforms and never participate in the success of the platforms that we help build so we have great folks in our cap table from the creative community to have ownership in what we're building and this will this will go down as like a a product that was made for creatives by creatives because it turns out in the world that we're about to walk into, everyone is going to be creative. Really awesome vision. So everybody should go check out FYI, get the word out, check it out yourself. Tell everybody we just desperately need companies like yours to get visible. Like, we want people to use it because it's awesome.

But just get yourself aware or people to use it to help make it awesome. That's a thing like uh constructive criticism to help us chisel and improve um because we you know when they say ai for good that means there's a lot of ai for bad like going to the supermarket be like yo excuse me where's the organic uh oranges that means there's a lot of fucking fake shit there's a lot of fucking fake shit. There's a lot of freaking processed shit in the supermarket to have a fucking section called organic.

So, but at the time when there's companies that have business practices that are for people, it turns out the gravity and the crunch on them is harder than folks that are doing AI for bad. That's the part that's like, because a lot of times bad undermines people's civil liberties, undermines people's privacy, and there's shit tons of money to be made while you, you know, data rape folks.

And they don't see the benefit or the reason why you should invest in something that's for the people, by the people. It's not going to make crazy money like these freaking data rapers, but it's going to make human delight, empowerment. And we're going to, some things will get wrong, and a lot of things will get right by the help of the people to guide us to be a part of our journey. But it's that Jedi moment. You know, they always, people always use Terminator like, yo, AI, man, it's going to take over. I'm like, why are you going to that movie only? Why don't you go to freaking Star Wars? In Star Wars,

there were multiple freaking AIs, multiple robots. Terminator's just one robot. So we need to make sure that there's other people playing in the space, not just one company. But Terminator idea, why did it go that way? Because there's one company,

one product, one model that fucks shit up. There's Star Wars idea. There's this motherfucker's like... And everybody knew what the fuck RTD2 was talking about. Then you got C-3PO. This motherfucker's arms don't even fucking bend right.

And that's so many different fucking technologies in this fucking film. But one thing they have in Star Wars that they don't have in Terminator is a fucking Jedi. And one thing they have in Star Wars that they don't have in Terminator is a fucking Jedi. And a Jedi and a fucking the

Siths and the Empire, they're all fighting with the same tool, a lifesaver. Nobody ever questioned who made that fucking product. That product at one point in time was designed, they tried to raise money for it, and some VC was like, I don't know. You got to get freaking traction.

Who's going to fucking buy a lifesaver? Fact is, there's a bunch of shit in that movie. Technology riddled throughout the whole entire film. But then there's this fight for human fucking freedom this human uh spiritual bond amongst freedom fighters and uh against the empire and it's a beautiful i like that story with ai and robotics that's more what the truth looks like than the terminator one terminator one we need to ensure that there's more people playing to give you your c3pos your i2d2s and all the other robots and bots and ais that are in it the beam projector it's all companies they're all products versus the terminator which is one product and if terminator

is a terminator which company made it which company is responsible for that, that we know today. If we're going to use movies to determine where we're going to, as a metaphor of what's at risk, I think it's more like Star Wars. Yeah, I agree with you. And the important thing is to just make sure that more folks and more companies like yours have access to the technology they need to go make amazing things and to solve the problems they think are important. Yeah, we're not doing- No one company.

Yeah, and we're not- And no one company can figure it all out. Yeah, and we're not going to do C3PO's no bending elbows. That's not our product. Yeah, don't do that. Okay, cool. Thank you so much kevin scott all right man great great chatting with you

what a fantastic conversation with will i am all right So I did want to talk to you a little bit about this. And you mentioned this at the top of the show. When you first met him, you were struck by his optimism about AI, especially for artists. I was struck by that, too. But what I was actually really struck by beyond just kind of the optimism for what the potential might be. I really thought that the way that he framed what the potential new careers that creatives might be able to get in this AI world was really, really compelling. His analogy, you know, talking about how drummers, studio drummers then became producers, that is exactly right on. We've seen something similar

in the tech space where people who were known as IT pros then become DevOps engineers or they become SREs. And you see how just because a new form of technology has come in, that doesn't mean that the people who had those old roles disappear entirely. It's instead, I think, kind of an opportunity for them to take on a new role that could in many ways be more lucrative. So I wanted to hear kind of your thoughts on that as somebody who, you know, I know you think a lot about AI, but you come at this a lot from the technology perspective. Talking to someone like him, who's obviously also very involved with creatives, did that have you thinking about anything differently or does that give you any hope

for how we might work this out? Well, I think it certainly gives me more hope. Yeah, and I love the drummer analogy because when these technologies enter fields, they are very complicated things. It's sort of difficult, I think, to predict exactly how they're going to be used and how AI was going to wreak economic havoc on the labor markets and have been making these predictions for the past decade or more. They've almost all been wrong. And so the predictions can be wrong in both directions, both pessimistic and optimistic.

And the reality is usually more complex and interesting than the prognostications. And so I love hearing these analogies like the drum machine one. I mean, the thing that I will say is this notion that there's no such thing as stasis in jobs is a thing that gets impressed upon you very early in your journey as a computer scientist or software engineer or programmer because everything has just changed so much over the past few decades. So I've been, I'm 51 now. I've been, like, I think I earned my first dollar from writing a program 40 years ago now, which is depressing to say out loud. But the difference between that first program and the programs that people are writing right now are just like remarkable. Like it's almost unrecognizable, the activity.

And so like the jobs have changed, the tools you use have changed. You know, and even when I was a computer science teacher at university, you know, 20 years ago now, you know, it was a real challenge as a computer science professor to keep up with the rate of change when you're trying to educate kids. And so like, I think it's easy for us in the technology industry to assume that the rate of change for us is high and that it is not as high elsewhere. But I think sometimes that's a, you know, that's a myth. Like everybody's job is changing all the time. Always, always. No, I mean, I think that's exactly true. That's actually kind of what I was thinking is that in tech, we do tend to kind of expect and think that things are changing. And we don't necessarily because maybe we're in our own bubble or whatever else, you know, don't realize that other industries are that way, too. Some maybe take longer than others and are more stayed for longer periods of time. But if I even look at, you know, with both of my parents' careers were, my mom worked in education and my father in real estate

development. And I'm just thinking about how much those industries changed over the course of their careers. You know, it might be slower, but it is still one of those things you're not going to ever have that, I guess, stasis to your point. Yeah. And like, even what you did in your past life, you were a professional journalist for a while. And I'm guessing when you started doing that job, it was probably before social media and like just things like social. It was right when it happened. And ironically, I joined then right because it was that change that was happening. And I knew that that was my in and that was my a chance to actually enter and have a career which was different, which I think actually right now is interesting for people coming in to art and creativity through AI, right? A hundred percent. So like the thing that you just said, and Will said it as well, and this is a thing that I've believed my, you know, my entire life is folks who are

well attuned to what is happening in the technological landscape and like what, what those technological changes mean for, you know, the structure of industry and whatnot, like they will be able to realize such amazing opportunities to like enter professions uh you know that are changing or to like have jobs and professions that don't even exist right now i mean the thing the thing with ai is like the rate of change is very fast so you know we have a we have new types of jobs now uh so we're recording this in May of 2023. There are jobs that are being posted right now for AI for things like prompt engineer that literally didn't exist last fall. No one knew what a prompt engineer was. Exactly. Six months ago, we literally did not have.

In November of 2022, This was not a thing. And now, yeah, there are job postings and people leaning into this. It's incredible. Yeah. And so it doesn't mean that it's not disconcerting or disruptive or whatnot. But like, you know, I think the advice that I would give to everyone listening to this podcast and a thing that they should, you know, probably go, you know, share with their communities is, you know, just pay attention to what's going on. Like the opportunities, I'm highly confident will be there. And they will be interesting, interesting and amazing opportunities for folks who are, you know, willing to lean into, you know, what's changing. I completely agree.

I mean, and that is actually, to me, it's always been one of the most interesting things about Will.i.am is that very early on, kind of at the peak of the Black Eyed Peas success, he was willing to lean in and start experimenting in other ventures and in other ways. Far before, and this was before streaming had a profound impact on

publishing and on record sales. And yet he was very early on to look into other ways of spreading both his creativity around and frankly, is making money too. And I think that, yeah, exactly like you said, don't be afraid of leaning into or exploring something new and taking those opportunities. Because when I see what's happening in AI right now, I tell a lot of young computer science students or people who are new entering into the world, it's hard to keep up with everything that's happening. in a really exciting time where you can really get in and kind of create careers for yourselves that you might not have been able to do not just six months ago, but, you know, even a couple of years ago that can pay very long dividends many years into the future. Yeah. And, you know, there's also moments like the one that we're in right now are for people who have really big visions and like they sort of see the way things are and they

wish that things were different. Like these are the moments where you actually have a window of opportunity to go make things different. And like, I think it was really interesting, the thing that Will was saying about AI and music. So, you know, there are three industries now, recording industry, publishing industry, and touring industry. And like, maybe this is a way to like have a fourth industry. And like, maybe it's an industry that, you know, gives artists more control than they've had, which is a thing that I think artists, you know, since I've been alive, have been a thing that they've struggled with and advocated for. No, I mean, it's been, it's been something that I think through the history of recorded music has there's been the tension there. And wouldn't that be fantastic

if this could be a way where the fourth industry could emerge that could actually empower the artists? Wouldn't that be amazing? Yeah. And so these are just the moments, if you want change like that to happen, now's the time.

Because as things get resorted, you have all sorts of people pushing for their particular vision for how the technology is going to affect the resorting. And so you just need to go push hard. You need to push hard, get your voice out there. Don't be afraid about ruffling feathers. Yeah, I totally agree with that. I totally agree that this is an important moment and an important opportunity. Well, that is all the time that we have for today. Huge, huge thanks to Will.i.am for being with us.

If you have anything that you would like to share, send us an email anytime at behindthetech at microsoft.com. And you can follow Behind the Tech on your favorite podcast platform or you can check out our full video episodes on YouTube. Thanks for tuning in. See you next time.