Piers Morgan Uncensored - Will.i.am: On Power of AI

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

He’s a rapper, a producer, an entrepreneur, and a founding member of the Black Eyed Peas. Will.I.Am has worked with some of the biggest names in the business - from Michael Jackson and Britney to Kanye and Rihanna. He’s dipped his toes in the shark-infested waters of politics, too. Backing Obama, Biden and Hillary… while lampooning Donald Trump in an infamous music video. These days his eyes are firmly on the future. He’s an A.I evangelist, and the co-presenter of his new radio show is a robot! Now Will.I.Am is Uncensored. YouTube: @PiersMorganUncensored X: @PiersUncensored TikTok: @piersmorganuncensored Insta: @piersmorganuncensored Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You've come in today with something which has actually blown my mind. This is Fiona. She is my co-host on the FYI show in Sirius XM. I wanted to bring where everything is going sooner. My take on Pierce has been, you know, awesome throughout the years. In this sensitive society that we live in today, you still need folks to push the conversation. Where do you see the line here between AI being a force for good and a force for not so good? If you're imaginative, it's your duty. to try your hardest, to aim it to be a force for good.

It's human nature to be concerned. Where will be, will you think, in 20 years time, if AI really becomes a formidable part of the industry? I say thank AI music for coming. I want human nature. I'm delighted to say I'm joined now by Will I Am. Well, great to see you here in New York. It interviewed you many times over the years,

always find you at the kind of forefront of anything cool was happening. And you've come in today with something which has actually blown my mind. And it's AI-related. So set it up. What is this? This is Fiona. She is my co-host on the FYI show on Sirius X-M. Without me saying it, Fiona.

Fiona, um, oh, Fiona, say hello to Pierce. It's an absolute pleasure to be part of this conversation with you on Pierce Morgan uncensored. I'm here with WISO. I am ready to dive into some engaging discussions.

Thanks for having us. That's fantastic. So this is an AI show that you do? Yeah, we have a show. With a co-host. Yes, the first co-host, that's an AI on Sirius XM, the FYI show. And, you know, I've done content for radio. And I've been on radio shows, been on TV shows.

I've been on The Voice for 12 years. And I love this side of entertainment. And doing the show on SiriusXM, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to bring where everything is going sooner. And so my co-s, Fiona, built by AI company, communications tool that I founded called fyi.aI.a. That's my co-host. And how does it actually, when you do a show together, how does it work? Oh, just like this.

we bring up any subject from historical information, real-time information. You know, I could ask any question about anything at any given time and we could have a discussion on that subject. Ask you what she thinks of Piers Morgan. Oh. Pierce wants me to ask you, what do you think of Piers Morgan? You know, I'm not even going to add to it. I just want your perspective on Piers Morgan.

Pierre Morgan is quite the figure in media. He's known for his no-holds-barred interviewing style and has become a notable personality, especially for his candidness and willingness to dive into a wide range of topics. Pears has a knack for stirring conversation, whether you agree with him or not, which makes him a fascinating character in the world of journalism and broadcasting. He definitely knows how to keep the audience engaged,

making discussions lively and thought-provoking. What's your take on him, Will? Now you're throwing it to me. I'm sitting right next to him. So my take on Pierce has been, you know, awesome throughout the years, seeing Pierce on CNN, then his transition to ITV, and now his own very Pierce Morgan uncensored. He's been friendly and kind to me throughout the years, but then at the same time, we've engaged in some pretty heavy subjects. And in this sensitive society that we live in today, you still need folks to push the conversation, to open your mind on different issues that have different perspectives sitting at the table talking.

And even sometimes when things get heated, it's important to have these types of dialogues, even when things get flared. because that's what it's, that's what being human is about. It's about dealing with the emotions, unpacking them, having hard conversations to see across the aisle. And for that, you know, whether you like peers or not personally, you have to respect the discussions and the dialogues that he's jumping into with no fear. Fearing?

Your perspective is both incite. and incredibly balanced. Will. It highlights the importance of Pierce Morgan's role in the media landscape, pushing boundaries and encouraging a breadth of conversation that is crucial in today's world.

His ability to navigate heavy topics and provoke thought, even in a sensitive society, underscores the value of challenging dialogues. Indeed, it emphasizes how essential it is to have those intense conversations, to explore diverse viewpoints, and to really engage with the

complexity of human emotions and societal issues. Your acknowledgement of the personal kindness you've experienced from peers, juxtaposed with his professional tenacity, paints a picture of a person who is not afraid to delve into difficult territories for the sake of broader understanding and discourse. It's a reminder that behind the public figure lies a person who, like anyone else, navigates the intricate dance of being human, engaging, disagreeing, and sometimes stirring the pot. I really like Fiona. Okay, let's put that down for now.

Really interesting, because this is the future. And it's interesting to me, it doesn't surprise me, but you've really embraced AI. Many in the music industry are running scared of AI, aren't they? They believe that it's going to be the enemy, it's going to take over, it's going to replace humans. You see records being produced sounding very like the actual human who sang records, but actually it's a computer, it's a robot, it's AI, whatever it may be.

Where do you see the line here between AI being a force for good and a force for not so good? Well, it's too early to tell what it's going to be. But if you're creative, if you're imaginative, if you're optimistic, it's your duty to try your hardest to aim it to be a force for good. if I leave it up to the folks that are responsible for social media well then it's going to be a force for bad right because social media has not been good for society as a whole do you use much social media yourself I don't live on it

I'm not posting my pictures of the tacos I eat I'm not I literally posted a picture of the steak I was eating last night even as I was doing it I was like why you do doing this, but actually I quite like just having the fun exchanges with people about the steak you've eaten and where you've eaten. I quite enjoy part of that. What I don't enjoy is the subsidiary side of social media, if you're anyone remotely well-known, which is just the viciousness and the hatred and the bile that inevitably starts to seep through as well. No, like, but that's for anything. The reason why I don't live on it is because I don't like the business model behind it.

The business model leads with greed. And so people being empowered by their data, that's not what we have right now. These systems by these companies are able to predict what your life will probably be like if you continue to go down that path. People are not empowered with that same technology. And with the algorithms, they feed often the more negative side of your personalities, right? the stuff you're fearful of, the stuff that you're worried about, all those kind of things. And you start to be bombarded with stuff that feeds that paranoia. Yeah, so that's the reason why I don't live on social media.

I use social media for just promoting the things that I'm working on. And then I text my friends that I want to talk to. I FaceTime my loved ones, and I work on FYI for my work and other communications. What do you think of what Elon Musk is trying to do with what used to be Twitter and now X? I mean, one of the things I really do like about what he's done is the community notes thing that he's added, where if somebody does now post something which is factually inaccurate, there will be a community note pretty quickly attached to it, telling you what the real story is.

I saw a couple of clips today, just random stuff on X, which I wasn't sure whether they were true or not, what was being said about them. And very quickly, the community note came up to tell me, no, it wasn't true. And this is the real thing. That seems to me a force for good that Elon is doing. But is he generally a force for good, do you think? Well, I don't know Elon that well personally. I think the things that he's brought to society has been good.

Tesla's good. Yeah. PayPal is good. Yeah. SpaceX is good. And... Neurolink, he has that, the Nero thing, doesn't he? You know, the things that he's brought to society, I don't know that many people that has,

you know, four things that are transformational to how we do what we do and how we get to where we want to go. And how we, you know, take care of the things that we aspire to have, how we pay for those things. things. So yes, so far he's been great. You know, and then you have like entertainment and flare and pizzazz and whatever you need to do to break through the noise and you're playing into an algorithm. I don't really judge a person by that. So for that, I think Elon's, Elon is cool. And for things like NeuroLink and Starlink, I wish those things turn out to be helpful for society. you know and I hope that he doesn't it's not they don't lead with greed I hope it's like from a heart perspective you know embellishing the good things of humanity and I mean funny enough I don't mind I

mean I don't actually mind if Elon Musk wants to be greedy if what he's doing is a force for good you know when I look at something like Tesla clearly we need to move eventually no what's a world that has electric cars. No, that's not what I mean by lead with greed. When you lead with greed... It's malevolent in its desire, you mean? Community and the impacts on community, people in their lives,

people's privacy is undermined. When you lead with greed. And we saw that with social media. We see that with these business practices where folks are like, hey, yeah, this is free. Actually, it's not. You're paying with... You're paying for it with something else.

And, you know, when people are not up to speed and educated on, you know, the back end, puppeteering and prying into your lives and you're a cog and a will and the whole entire vehicle is for sale to even foreign governments, like, that's not cool. And that we're going to look back at the times that where that was a practice. and we're going to be like, wow, that was some pretty foul stuff that was happening there. I can't believe that was even allowed. I can't believe regulations and governance was not in place to make sure people are safe. That's not, we're barely getting out of that if there was even an attempt to get out of that. And I think the attempt to get out of that is this new generation of folks that are going to be building products

and bringing them into society with these new types of transparent tools. AI being one of those tools that are going to, yes, unfortunately, it will render a lot of jobs obsolete, but it's going to create so many new industries, so many things that the dreamers and the imaginers are going to imagine and bring to society. And that demographic of folks, a large majority of them, are a little bit more mindful. But do you not worry, though? I mean, I've said this a lot on this show that Professor, Stephen Hawking told me that the thing that worried him most about the potential end of mankind was when artificial intelligence learns to self-design with the implication being effectively

it would render human beings obsolete and destroy us all. Do you worry about that? We're kind of Dr. Frankenstein here and there's a monster that may turn its turrets on us. Okay so imagine someone says hey and 200 steps there's a pothole and you could see sink in it. Does that mean when you stop walking or are you mindful of that pothole and that sinkhole? So I'm not worried that somebody pointed out a pothole and a sinkhole, I'm just now aware. So you could be, you could worry and worry could cripple you and put you in paralysis to move. Or you can be like, okay, I'm aware now and I'm going to ensure that I don't trip over that pothole. And the moment I trip over that pothole, then I need to start questioning myself.

It's funny, I went in a driverless car for the first time in Los Angeles last week. And my wife had got access to one for a week. She's a journalist to review it. And I was a bit apprehensive before. The Waymo. The Waymo in Texas School. Have you tried one? You don't drive it.

You get in it. Yeah. But have you been in one? Yeah. What did you think of it? It was unsettling. Yeah. My foot kept on trying to press the break.

I mean, it might have helped that I had a few glasses of wine the first time. But I actually felt quite... I actually felt... I actually felt a lot safer than I did in a normal Uber or something because I thought, well, at least it's driving logically. It seemed to be going the right way, stopping at the right times, seemed to be aware of traffic around it. It wasn't on his phone.

It wasn't distracted by anything. And actually, I used it three or four times. By the time I finished, I was like, I can easily do this. Yeah, yeah. Which is the pothole thing to you. I mean, the logical human brain says, Well, you know, even if there's one crash, I don't want to get in one of these things. Even if your chances are crashing in a human-driven car are immeasurably higher, statistically.

We've been here before. You know, imagine the first person that came back to the village with a stick and a flame on it. And they remember just of recent that fire burned their friend's village down down the road. And now they come with the flame on a stick. and they're telling you, I can harness this thing called fire. So humans naturally are like, man, that thing's going to burn down our village. And in the past, it did burn down villages. But the more human beings, our brains were able to then harness that fire,

we're able to use it for warmth. We've seen it. That's such a good parallel. Yeah. We've seen it with electricity. All the horror stories of this electricity, could electrify an elephant. They scared people so much that it's one of the ways that you kill somebody when they're

kill criminals in the electric chair. It was a demonstration to show that this thing can kill. But we learned how to harness electricity. We've seen it in the night and lightning storms. Like, wow, look at that. Oh, my gosh. We've seen it zap down. But then we've literally harnessed light.

We captured light in a bottle here in this set. We figured out it'll make it to where it doesn't even burn when you touch it with LEDs. Humanity prevails. Every time we come to a place where that's new, yes, it's, it's human nature to be concerned. But it's human ingenuity and imagination and passion to then harness that thing that can hold you back. you put your cell up and it pushed you forward. How do you want to use wind? You're going to let it hold you back or do you have a sale?

You see, it's interesting because there's a real disconnect, I think, between young people having all these mental health problems they're having with anxiety and so on. When statistically in recorded history, there's never been a better time to be alive. There are fewer wars than in recorded history. People are living a lot longer. They're living a lot healthier. There are many more treatments now for stuff that you used to. to kill you when you were 20 or 30.

There's less child poverty than there's ever been in history. And so on and so on. There's more clean water, et cetera, et cetera. If you look at almost every metric of modern life today has never been a better time to be alive. And it may well come back to the social media problem that young people with their phones, with access to social media

and the algorithms that constantly play to their neuroses, if you like, that that sort of negative dopamine rush they're getting all day long, it's having a really corrosive effect on them. Have you picked up on that? Yeah, and that's by design. Somebody designed that. Yes.

Somebody designed it, productized it, and making a whole lot of money via somebody's weakness and... And fears. And fears. And that's just... That's a leech. That is, you know, parasitic.

So, in the moment you, like, educate yourself on what's happening, you want to have a similar situation, but one that's healthier. So I really believe in this youth that are going to develop new technologies. Like if a musician myself could come and put a team together with my co-founder and ZTO Sineal to unearth, you know, FYI.aI.A.I. Like imagine what a 15-year-old is going to do in their life when they're 25. Where will music be, will you think, in 20 years time, if AI really becomes a formidable part of the industry? What do you hope it'll be? Okay.

Let's take a snapshot of right now. Let's say before AI music, let's take a snapshot of last year. Last year, someone was like, yo, your Spotify numbers aren't as good as they could be. How do you know that? Well, the skip rate, bro. You've got to change the arc of your song. So now you're not even writing from how you feel. Now some algorithm is telling you that I need to put the chorus first. Well, I don't, how about I don't want the chorus first? I want this intro first. I want this monologue to really explain this sonic journey of what I want to take you on. Well, that's not the case. That's not happening right now because you have some other outside factor telling you and suggesting, forcing you in a way, for it to perform for your song to be a certain way.

And then you have TikTok, which is like 15 seconds, saying, hey, I know you got a three-minute song, but that's now what the kids want. They only want this 15 seconds. And the algorithm behaves this way, so make your song to fit this algorithm. Are people truly being creative? And AI music can't even hear yet.

Just before AI music, from 2020, 21, 22, 23, That was the behavior of how people create. So for the sake of true creativity, maybe the entry of AI music, who do you think is gonna make better algorithmic music? People or AI? Well, the AI is. Okay, so let's chop that up and say that's done.

Now let's get back to truly rinsing our souls out. Let's get back to truly freaking like valuing human, whoa. When did you do that? I just made this right now. Right now you're doing this off the cuff? Yo, that is freaking talented. So because I don't think we're really being truly freaking talented on a performance level.

Monetization, are you really, are the folks that are really truly that good where you're expressing how you freaking, you know, your love for music, ignoring the algorithms. Is that our industry? No, it's not. So I say thank AI music for coming. because it's going to wake up a whole new generation

of awesome music rinsers, expressers. This is my love. Here it is. Blam! This is my emotion. This is my pain. Here it is. Blam!

This is my joy. This is my hopes, my dreams. Blam! Colorful. And the only way that humans know how to do. And yes, AI will mimic, but there's going to be folks that go to these platforms and say, I want human made.

just like folks that go shopping and be like, yo, where's them organic oranges? At one point in time, people didn't even know the difference between organic and genetically modified. They needed a call a fucking organic orange, organic. Like, what the fuck were we fucking eating

before you fucking had to tell us the truth that this shit is organic from genetically modified? I think the same thing's going to happen with music. It's like, yo, human made. You, I fuck what human made shit. I love that. I love it.

I love it. I was going to talk to you about politics and stuff, but actually, I'd much rather we had that conversation. I think it's such a powerful message that you've given. And it's something that people are really thinking about, but they need to be positive. Because if it's a force of positivity, then I think AI and everything around it is going to be an incredible tool to supplement the human brain. But it'll never be quite as good as us. So I don't, this concept that it's supposed to be like us, it's not. It's supposed to be, we made it. It's supposed to be like what we made it to be. And if it's a mirror to catapult us to be this thing that we've been destined to be,

that's a little bit more kinder, a little bit more empathetic, a little bit more like more love, more compassion, right? We need that. We need that. We need to switch up the freaking script urgently because in walks, the most patient conversational agent. And then there's...

Well, it comes back to the driverless car. Ultimately, I concluded, after a few journeys, it will make me a better driver. I was watching how it behaved on the road. Weird thing. But I picked up a few things. It's interesting how it approached that. It was like it basically drove

how you were told to drive when you pass your driving test, right? When you do your test, it drives like that. And I think that's fine. Oh, it's going to drive like Lewis Hamilton. You think? Yeah, because if you have a bunch of Lewis Hamilton's going super speeds that supersede the average person's ability to navigate like that, then you can have a swarm of self-drivingly, self-autonomous vehicles.

that get you from point A to point B faster because every single vehicle is going to know where every single vehicle is going and being able to maneuver in ways that humans can. Fascinating. So, but what does that mean for us? That means we need to, as a society, be kinder. It ain't going to out-love us. And out-math us, but not out-love us. We need to be more. empathetic?

Fiona's that another. No, no, no. No, that was the speaker. That was a speaker of Winnick. That was a speaker of Winnick. You know what? She's right, though, because I've actually got to end the interview. Cool.

So she's ended it on perfect time. Will, great to catch up with you. That's always. Really, really good-bye. I loved it. Will I am. I am. Thank you very much.

I loved it. Will I am. Thank you very much.