Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - will.i.am: How AI Is Powering a New Era of Creativity | Artificial Intelligence | YAPClassic

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

During the pandemic, will.i.am noticed how broken creative collaboration was. Tools like email, Zoom, and Dropbox made it hard for creators to stay organized and integrated. Determined to find a better way, he built FYI.AI, a generative AI platform that helps creators collaborate, share data securely, and manage their projects all in one place. In this episode, will.i.am shares how artificial intelligence is powering a new era where creativity, inclusion, and technology redefine entrepreneurship and artistic expression. In this episode, Hala and will.i.am will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:04) His Early Life and Creative Roots (08:13) The Power of a Growth Mindset in Success (11:19) What Being a Futurist Means to Him (17:08) How AI Is Shaping the Future of Innovation (23:39) Building FYI.ai: AI-Powered Creative Collaboration (37:18) Artificial Intelligence vs. Human Creativity in Music (42:52) Why He’s Optimistic About AI in Action (46:06) Advocating Diversity and Inclusion in AI will.i.am is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, producer, and entrepreneur. He is a seven-time Grammy award-winning founding member of the musical group the Black Eyed Peas. Beyond music, he is a dedicated futurist and technologist, who has invested in and advised several major technology companies. Most recently, he founded FYI.ai, an AI-powered platform designed to optimize collaboration and digital ownership for the creator economy. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/PROFITING  Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting.  Quo - Get 20% off your first 6 months at Quo.com/PROFITING  Revolve - Head to REVOLVE.com/PROFITING and take 15% off your first order with code PROFITING  Merit Beauty - Go to meritbeauty.com to get your free signature makeup bag with your first order.  DeleteMe - Remove your personal data online. Get 20% off DeleteMe consumer plans at to joindeleteme.com/profiting  Spectrum Business - Visit Spectrum.com/FreeForLife to learn how you can get Business Internet Free Forever. Airbnb - Find yourself a cohost at airbnb.com/host  Resources Mentioned: will.i.am’s App: FYI.AI will.i.am’s foundation: Im Angel Foundation: i.am.angel foundation.org YAP E241 with Mo Gawdat: youngandprofiting.co/DangersAI  Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals  Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter  LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new  Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, ChatGPT, AI Marketing, Prompt, AI in Business, AI for Entrepreneurs, Future of Work, AI Podcast

Today's episode of Yap is sponsored in part by Indeed Shopify, Quo, Revolve, Merit Beauty, Delete Me, Northwest, and Spectrum Business. Attract interview and hire all in one place with Indeed. Get a $75-sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com slash profiting. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. Quo, formerly open phone, is the number one business phone system. 20% off your first six months at quo.com slash profiting. Shop the latest trends from today's top brands with Revolve. Head to Revolve.com slash profiting and take 15% off your first order with code profiting.

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get business internet free forever. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at young and profiting.com slash deals. Hello, my young and profiteers. I know most of us, if not all, have been in a situation where you open up your closet and you suddenly feel like you've got nothing to wear. That stress is real, especially if I've got a big speaking engagement or a major event and I need an outfit that makes me feel confident and great about myself. That's why I love Revolve. It's my go-to for every occasion. From weddings to work events to going out at night, I always wear Revolve. With over 1,200 brands and 100,000 styles, they've got everything, from elevated basics to statement pieces. Plus, they drop new arrivals daily, and the curated edits make finding outfits easy and fun. Whether it's a weekend away, a big night out, or just a little style refresh, your dream wardrobe is just one click away. Head to revolve.com slash profiting, shop my edit, and take 15% off your first order with code profiting. Fast two-day shipping, easy returns. Sometimes I do overnight delivery when I need an outfit in a pinch. It's literally the

only place you need to shop from. That's revolve.com slash profiting to get my favorites and get 15% off your first order with code profiting. Offer ends November 9th, so happy shopping. In this Yap classic episode, we're revisiting my conversation with one of the most creative minds on the planet, Will I Am. You know him as the seven-time Grammy Award-winning founder of the Black Eyed piece, but he's so much more than a music legend. He's a futurist, technologist, and founder of FYI, an AI-powered platform transforming how creators collaborate. In this conversation, Will I.am shares how he used his imagination to escape the projects of East L.A., why creativity is the new currency, and how AI can become a tool for him. empowerment, inclusion, and a new human renaissance. So yeah, fam, I want you to get ready to see creativity and technology in a whole new light.

Without further ado, I give you the one and only well I am. Nice to meet you, Harla. Thanks for having me. You know, I don't often get a chance to speak with legendary artists like you, so I'm really happy to have you on the show. And I want to get into so many topics from how you rose up in your music career to AI and its impact on creators, as well as your experience as an entrepreneur and a futurist. But before we get into the future, I'd love to get into your past. You grew up in L.A. You were raised by a single mother. I also learned that you were voted most likely to succeed in high school.

But tell us in your own words, what was young Will I Am like? I grew up in an all-mexican neighborhood. I went to a predominantly white school in a really rich neighborhood. and I went to all-black church. So that kind of like upbringing of different ethnicities, diversity, capital differentiation, the haves and the have-nots, I realized, you know, what I possessed was something that was sought after that money couldn't buy. That was authenticity, creativity, imagination.

and no matter which pocket I was rocking in, whether it was my neighborhood in East L.A., which is poor, predominantly Mexicano, to Palisades and Brentwood and Parra Vare where the rich white folks are at or the soulful black church, the creativity and the imagination, that was my currency. That's what separated me from the herds. And I loved it.

I loved being in that diverse mix. And at what point in your childhood or teenage years did you first get interested in music? People always say, like, you know, I was into music ever since I was little, like, for real. Like, I was into music ever since I was nine. I could say nine. Nine years old was when I realized I really loved it. 13 is when I started writing my own songs. By 15, this is what I wanted to do for a living.

By 17, I had a record deal. I had a record contract at 17. I was in the, just hopped into the 11th grade. And it was a big deal going to school. When I came to school with my record contract on my check, look, I got a record deal with EasyE. Ruthus Records, NWA, what? So my neighborhood was like, fucking Willie, dog,

you sign with Easy E homes. And so that was beautiful, you know, when your neighborhood is proud. And then all my friends, my wife friends in school were like, oh my gosh, William, you got a record deal? It's so freaking cool. cool. And so that was cool. And then my, you know, my friends at church were like, dang, wheel, that's fucking dope. I had like a lot of support and acknowledgement and, you know, everyone was proud of that accomplishment at 17. So that went a long way.

That's incredible. And your music career has been absolutely epic. You've gotten seven Grammy Awards, a Latin Grammy Award, a daytime Emmy Award. You produce songs for superstars like Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Shakira, John Legend. And your rise to fame, aside from your talent, must have been grit, right? So I'm curious to understand the motivation behind your career and all that you've achieved. Well, rise to fame, that's just like the results of relentless, push, go get it. A door's closed, you design a new door. Like a lot of time people think when the doors close, you wait for another door to open.

You actually are supposed to design a new door. Once again, it's that creativity is your currency where you have to make the opportunities. You don't wait for opportunities. And the rise to fame is the result of that type of manifesting dreams. Because people would rather see you fail as entertainment. When watching people fail is entertainment, you have that working against any dreamer was when the world wants to see you fall. Or when there's so many setbacks in your community, there's so many setbacks in society as a whole.

Tripwires, peer pressure, try this drug, partake in these promiscuous activities. All those types of things are like recipes for your dream to be compromised. If you want to be the author of your success or, you know, be lucky that you have success, which one you want. Luck is like a gamble. An author of success is sacrifice, dedication, and focus. Hustle, networking, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, and selecting who your support system is. Because a lot of times, like, the nightmare could creep.

And the nightmare are basic things like, I got to pay my bills. The nightmare is like, I got to get a job. That's a nightmare to a dream because a job is not necessarily the vehicle to manifest your dream. Sometimes a job is the vehicle to destroy your dream. Like when you're working at a job, you're actually working to help somebody else's dream real. Or you could have a dream and really put strategy behind that dream. And then there's people that are going to want to work with you to make your dream real. Like, which one do you want?

And I want it to be in the vehicle of manifesting my dream. To do that, you need a support system. You have to put yourself in a situation to where getting a job, and I know that sounds really like, that sounds irresponsible for me to say that. Like, getting a job is the tripwire to manifest your dream. But for a lot of folks, it is. And so my journey is because of people that really help me not have to take that route.

You know, my mom, my ex-girlfriend, her family, they really help me from not having to, like, when are you going to get a job? I'm like, I have a job. I'm just not getting paid yet. Watch, you'll see, one day I'll get paid. I just need you to help me hold it down. I never done drug you have to be like

nah that's not what I want to do promiscuous activities I was never into that kind of like hey what up girl like you know what I'm saying because that could really fuck your dream up when you're out there

like something's going to take your energy and so I always invested my energy in the dream a lot of times your personal life sacrifices because you know you put all your energy in the dream so that that rise to

fame, I don't like that word fame, because that's like you're doing it for the wrong reasons. My reasons were like, I just want to take care of my family. I want to be able to support, provide. I want to be able to always have the ability to have an idea and manifest that idea. Now, you really won the hearts of the American people, especially with black-eyed peas. And there's so many artists, especially today, now that, you know, you can release music independently, digitally. So why do you think that you made it compared to so many artists who go unnoticed? Sacrifice, focus, reaching, not settling for like immediate success, always reaching for like broader success.

Like, hey, my neighborhood's dope. I want to have popularity in my neighborhood, but I also want to go to that neighborhood over there. I want to rock this crowd over here at this college at USC. but I also want to rock UCLA. I want to rock UCLA, but I also want to go to Northridge. I want to rock Northridge. I also want to go to Dominguez Hills. You'll imagine we play San Diego.

Like, we've been rocking L.A. How about we go to San Diego State and UCSD? You'll imagine we go to freaking Santa Barbara College? And so that mentality of growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, new neighborhoods, new locations, new fan bases that kept us hungry. And a lot of times when you do that, you have the truest and the purest that are like, yo, man, like, y'all ain't underground no more. Who said I want to stay underground? At one point in time, Black App Peace were an underground group.

And there's a rap that I wrote before we released our first record. And there's two songs. One that's called Joints and Jams. And the lyric on Joints and Jam says, We're about mass appeal, no segregation, got black to Asian and Caucasian saying, And that's the joint, that's the jam. And that was always the mission. There's another song that says,

You my man, I got a plan to do it all. I got a plan that none of y'all ever thought about because underground niggas don't be thinking on going kind of nino like Lincoln. How can you make moves when you always trapped under? I'm trying to reach the surface to learn more about the thunder. I wonder what really makes the world go around. Not thugs, because thugs go round to bring other brothers down

to be in it for a quick blink, but when you start to sink, You'll be deeper than you was when you should have stopped to think about your consequence. Your actions don't make lots of sense. Brothers choose a wicked life because the lack of confidence. The devil jack you for your sense. Now, you can pay the rent and that's no accident. You let it slip so it went.

That whole mentality of like staying on this like conscious path to reach as many people as possible has always been our mission from the jump. Like, yo, imagine going to Brazil, bro? Not just Rio, but Kudachiba, Belizonche, Portela Lega, Fortaleza, Fortinopolis, you know, Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Bahia. Like, let's go to all the places. That's always been our whole, like, Black IPs. We tour more outside America than we toured America. Like, America was like, yeah, we American, that's dope, but the world is massive.

So your accolades don't stop with music. You're an entrepreneur, you're a founder and CEO, you're a philanthropist. And so I want to get into your philanthropy, hopefully later in the interview if we have time. First, I want to talk about your role in business and entrepreneurship. So I know that you're a futurist and you've been a creative advisor to many major companies. Why do you call yourself a futurist and how do you see the future more clearly than others? I was a futurist when I was in the projects. Because to get out the projects, you have to have a future mindset.

You have to be able to have a plausible path out of a circumstance that has been set up for you to fail. And that type of dreaming and strategy behind the dream to manifest that dream to reality, that's future casting. It's one thing from like, I'm not into dreaming and I'm not into wishing. I like to have plausible future casting and use my intuition. Play on intuition and intuition. You follow your intuition on where you think things can go after you've sponged up the world and used your imagination to imagine what is going to come next.

And so applying that same type of world building that got me out of the world that was born in, I have applied that to not only the black IPs, I applied that to, you know, me consulting for companies like Intel, Coca-Cola, Beats, Apple, Mercedes, and, you know, startups, things like that. So, really happy with how things have turned out and the network that has been built. You know, I invested in companies early on, Twitter early on. Pinterest, early on, Tesla, before Elon took over the company, Twitter before Elon took over the company.

Elon's dope. You know, he's a big inspiration as far as, you know, what's possible business-wise, where individuals can create companies to compete with giant companies. That's dope. And I like going out and finding teams, investing in teams. I like trying to solve problems, funding those solutions and creating companies. and then going out and raising money, that journey is probably the most creative journey

for any creative to do. It's like, hey, let's apply our minds and our imagination to solve this problem. And if we solve that problem, let's see if there's a company that we can create from solving that problem. And what is it going to take for us to, you know, materialize that in the form of a company?

Are we going to use our own money? Are we going to go out and raise money? Who do we need? our fold to operationalize these creative workshops of identifying a problem, solving that problem, turning that problem into a product, funding that product, creating a company, right? That to me is the most creative type of workshopping in the whole world of creativity, doing that. That's such an interesting perspective. I've never really heard it that way. while we're on the topic of you being a futurist,

what's the most futuristic thing that you've ever done? I've done some pretty... You have. You played your music on Mars. I knew that. Yeah, that was dope. That was a really cool collaboration with NASA to send a song on Curiosity to Mars and beaming back to Earth.

That was dope. And it inspired our students to see what's possible as far as like. like inner city kids being in and around science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and showing them that we too can be a part of space exploration and engineering and showing them what's possible. Because a lot of times when you watch these documentaries or these movies about space exploration, a lot of times the folks that look like us that were involved are very rarely celebrated.

And there's lots of folks that look like us that have been behind the scenes doing awesome work. And I salute those Afronauts. Not astronaut. Afronauts. I like the Afronauts. Yeah, urbanites that are out there exploring space. And that was really cool.

So other futuristic things that I've done, it's not futurist as far as like your typical concept of futurism. But going back to my neighborhood and starting, A robotics program and computer science program was a futurist endeavor. And I started with 65 kids and now we have about just a little over 13,000 students in L.A. Amazing. In robotics and technology and computer science and engineering. That's future casting.

You're applying yourself identifying a problem and trying your hardest to solve that problem. Other futuristic things I did was back in 2012, We built a watch, we forked Android, created our own operating system, put our own chipset, a mobile chipset, a snapdragon chip set onto the wrist, wrapped the battery around the wrist, had a camera on the device in 2012. So in 2012-13, not many watches that were doing that. So that was futuristic, future casting. Yep, gang, as entrepreneurs, we know one of the biggest obstacles to scaling is finding the right team fast. I know firsthand how agonizing it can be when you're ready to hire, but the perfect person takes forever to find. In fact, I was recently texting with my girl chat of entrepreneurs

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at Indeed.com. Just go to Indeed.com slash profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. Hey, app fam, we talk a lot about protecting our businesses.

But let's talk about protecting ourselves and our families for ones. These days, we share so much information online and most people don't realize that data brokers collect and sell this personal information. your phone number, your home address, even your family details can be listed out for anybody to buy. That's how risks like stalking or identity theft happen. That's why I trust and recommend delete me. Delete me is something that I personally use to remove my data online.

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P-R-O-F-I-T-I-N-G at checkout. Again, that's join deleteme.com slash profiting. Use code profiting at checkout to get 20% off your consumer plan. Yap gang, this year has been a whirlwind. So much travel, so many big life changes between moving to Austin, flying to Portugal from my best friend's wedding, and bouncing back and forth to New Jersey to see my family. I feel like I've barely been home. And the travel just won't stop for me.

This fall, I'll be in Nashville for podcast interviews, and then I'm going to L.A. for podcast interviews as well, and I'm already eyeing a tropical beach vacation in the winter. I hate being cold. Through it all, booking my stays on Airbnb has made my travel experiences so much easier thanks to amazing hosts who made each stay feel like home. All of these travel plans make me think about my own place just sitting idle while I'm away. Why let it go unused? With Airbnb, you can host your home and give your guests a great experience without having to manage everything yourself. Airbnb's co-host network, work lets you partner with a vetted local co-host who manages it all, setting up your place,

handling bookings, guest communication, and even taking care of last-minute requests. That way, while you're busy traveling, your space is still running smoothly and earning extra income. Find yourself a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. And in terms of the future, something that's going to impact us so much, and that's the biggest trend that everybody wants to talk about right now is AI, right? So you call AI the new Renaissance Talk to us about when you were first exposed to AI and how you believe that AI is going to change the world. First time I heard the concept of AI was in 2005, and I met this amazing professor at MIT. His name is Professor Patrick Winston, rest in peace.

I was introduced to him by a guy by the name of Alan Hartstone in the Media Lab. And every time I would go to Boston, I would try my hardest to go to Professor Patrick. Winston's AI class from 2005, 2006, 2007, and, you know, just learn. And I was inspired by the field and a lot of the AI works and research that was happening in the not so popular side of culture because nobody was really checking for AI back then in popular culture. And in 2009, Blackoutes did this video called I'm going to be rocking that body. And if you Google it, type in, I'm going to be rocking that body.

There's a 10-minute video. The intro of that video has me coming to my best friends, Black IPs, and saying, yo, this right here is the future. Black IPs, what's going to take us to 3008 is this AI. We're going to invest in allowing our ideas to always be able to make songs in the future in 2008. The AIs that we program and train by ingesting all this information. information, their whole entire English language and our timbers, my high notes, my low notes, and the whole concept of how to train and prompt engineer is in this video in 2009.

So I've been in the AI for a while. And so that watch that I told you that we made in 2013, 12 and 13 was a voice, contextual voice conversational OS. So we were doing conversational computing back in 2013, 14, 15 on a product that we had on our wrist. But it was too early, it was early on that type of future casting. And I learned about the future, the potentials, when I was sitting in the futurist department at Intel. And a watch, like, you know, hey, let's reimagine what a watch is. And if you have small real estate on your wrist, you should be able to speak to it rather

than type and swipe. So that's the reason why we entered into voice computing back in 2000. 12's when we started building it, 2013, when we had a first prototype, 2014 is when we launched, it took us about two years to materialize. And we had an AI, a conversational, contextual voice operating system on the device. And ever since then, I've just been investing in AI teams, solutions. I invested in a bunch of the, a handful of the companies that are popular today, I invested in early stages of these companies that we know of now. So cool. I never realized that you were so involved in AI for such a long time.

That's like such cool information to learn because everybody thinks of you, mostly for your music career, but it's so cool to learn all these other things that you've been doing. Yeah, well, we just got out of AI winter. So the folks over at OpenAI helped push the field out of AI winter. So there's been people that have been working in AI for years. That's how, you know, we've gotten to this place of awesome sauce. You know, people like Demis and Mustafa, the founders of DeepMind. So there's an amazing firm called Horizon Ventures.

So the AI company that I started back in 2012-13, we had the same investors. And I was introduced to Demis and Mustafa, more like connected to Demis back in 2013 and 14, seeing the work that DeepMind was doing back then. And it's a small community of folks that are working on these technologies. It's an awesome community from all the way from, you know, Dario at Anthropic, the original architect for the GPT 1, 2, and 3. and Sam Altman and the Chad GPT cats to Mustafa and Inflection, Reed Hoffman, to Clem and the Hugging Face crew, to the runway cats, the Mid Journey.

Wow, the Mid Journey, folks. That's amazing. Mid Journey's like, wow, what? You know how big the Mid Journey team is? It ain't even that big. The what? Like, yo, redefining, like, yo, small teams doing awesome stuff

check out the tool like wow I gotta check it out I never checked it out yet you haven't checked out mid journey no I've never even heard of it I don't even think I'm I guarantee you I'm really caught up on things I've never heard of mid journey yo mid journey

what is it the shit dot com fucking awesome awesome dot org you gotta like celebrate and salute awesome and runway is dope too runway's really really dope

inflection is really, really fresh. You know, there's a lot of cool stuff that's coming. There's new companies working on new cool things. FYI, we're trying our hardest to push the boundaries on what, like, creative messaging is, like Web 3.0 Creative Enterprise, what is that? Creators have never had a messaging tool made for them where you could send big files on the messenger, open big files on the messenger, secure big files

with elliptical curve cryptography methodologies, have AI in the conversation with you and your team in a very safe, trusted way. Like, you know, we're really trying to champion like communication

in a creative renaissance and transforming the messenger. So yeah, FYI.a.a.i.a is like, we're really rocking, inspired by the Mid Journey team to stay lean and small, focus, build.

and solve problems to help creators be better creatives and supercharge them with awesome tools. Let's stick on that for a minute. I was talking to Lee a while ago when we first were talking about having you on the show. She's part of your team, and she was telling me how during COVID, you suddenly had to work from home

and you were kind of driven mad. Like, how am I supposed to use all the... This is really hard to work from home. And you realize there was so... many problems when it came to musicians and creators trying to create music when they had to work from home. So talk to us about the problems that you saw. Before COVID, you know, the world was the world. We took for granted how we used to do things. We went to work and we took for granted how awesome going to work was. We went home and we took for granted how awesome a peaceful

home was. And then all of a sudden the world stopped and we were working from home. And we realized that the home environment that we thought was home needed to have a little bit more love because people didn't really appreciate their home. And they really didn't appreciate their work. It just, it was what it was. It allowed us to look at things a little bit deeper. And just what is personal time? What is mental health? What is family? What is work? What is work? And it's work life. What is the balance between family work life? Like it allowed us to look at ourselves in the world and the world and society and in earth and separate them. Because a lot of times people mix up the world from society and society from earth and the planet. Right? Like all these

words that get interplayed. It's the end of the world. Hey, what does that actually mean? The end of the planet, in a society, in a state, how we, how can we continue to sustain this? The planet's going to like cease. No, that's not. The planet will heal itself. It always has cycle after cycle after cycle. And our contribution to it. And then there's a world, which is a construct, a human construct, something that we created, this concept of worlds, borders, nations, you know, extraction, buying land, buying product. All this stuff is like made up. actually. And we all abide by it. Like, we all, like, agreed that this is worth that. Some things are like inhumane on what is worth what. I saw the world in a different way during COVID.

And a lot of that was like, dang, what? We value all this stuff, but don't value this stuff. Like, people's lives? People's lives are precious. Wow, like, that stuff is really cheap. but really somebody paid with that with their lives? That's why it's cheap. Wow. We were doing, and we still do some pretty inhumane things in the name of cheap, in the name of a discount. And we've discounted all the people

who are responsible for your discount. Being home allowed me to really look deep and myself, what my purpose is, why am I creating? Am I trying to be solution-orientated? purposeful, and I started looking at the tools that I used to communicate or that were given to me to communicate. And at COVID, during COVID, it's like the messenger was, and Zoom came out of nowhere.

Nobody was talking about Zoom before COVID. Like, you barely Skyped during COVID. And Zoom just Zoom passed like Skype, like poor Skype. Poor Skype. Zoom just came out of nowhere and the creatives were continuing to rock on WhatsApp and I message and to do that

you need a Dropbox and a Wii transfer and I'm like, wait, my conversations are on the messenger and email sometimes because this file is super large so they have to send it on a Wii transfer and have to open it as a zip on my laptop because I can't open it from my phone on a

messenger. Some comments are on the Dropbox by some comments and replies are on the email where was that note was the note on the met like this shit is all over the place and that was like the majority of 2020 for my field I'm like wow I want to solve this just for me and the people that I collaborate with like this is there has to be a better way to work off the phone or tablet and email is like old school I don't like email email is like this old clunky what's the conversation flow? Like, this shit is all over the place. People are sending long text, but short emails.

Like, this shit is broken. Texts were always supposed to be short. That's why they call them SMS for short messages. But people are sending long messages on text, but short emails like, yes, hello, no. And I'm getting all these like CCs of just like yes and no's on email. This is broken. So I was like, let me find some awesome engineers and try to have like a singular interface of a communication, collaboration, digital asset management workplace in the form of a messenger where I could send large files where I could collaborate better

and have a better track of who said what, when they said what, awesome ledgers where I could send things and remove access to the encryption key to where now you don't have access to that folder or that file anymore. I could block it to where you can't take a screenshot or screen record, I can assign face ID.

The only person that could see this is this face and this face only. That's what a messenger should be like in 2020 right now, where people and teams can interact with intelligence all on a group thread, where it's generative AI and awesome talent all on the same conversation flow. Like, you know, if you're stuck and you need extra strategic counsel, you know, an AI away, you could just evoke strategy from any place on the messenger. Yes, that's what a messenger should sound like in 2020 right now. And so we started building that.

We had that vision back in 2020, materialized in 2021, the back end, the back end to allow you to call from the content. Right now, right now on any messenger, send you something, and then I'd be like, yo, yo, did you see what I sent you? He'd be like, yeah, okay, check it out and call me back. That's the flow right now. Or let's hop on this Zoom. Hey, hold on, I'm going to share my screen. And then after you share your screen, you're like, yo, yo, yo, can you send me an email

of what you shared? Or, hey, did you open up that text I sent you with that file? Look at it and call me back. That's the flow right now. On FYI, it's like, yo, I'm going to call you from this piece of content. I'm going to call you from this file so that when you see my phone call ringing,

you know what I'm calling you for. I'm calling you about this file. So you can even preview it before you answer the phone. And then you know the context of what I'm calling about. And then if I share this project with you or because FYI is project base,

you don't have to ask me for that file later. If I wanted you to keep it, I allow you to keep it. If I wanted to remove it, I remove access, I turn the key off, you don't have access to that. And then you have to call like, hey, that project you shared, can you give me access to see that? So those types of like turning off and on keys to remove or give you access to files that

are dear to me, giving me the ability to protect those files that are precious to me, whether the files are docs or songs or videos or PDFs or projects or contracts, whatever those files are that are precious to your dream and materializing those dreams, you should have all the tools to secure those files. And more importantly, you should own all that data. You should have to worry about some company freaking selling your identity and your data away. Like, that doesn't sound like 2020 right now. That sounds like some freaking greedy-ass data monarchy companies that are taking advantage of people, their communities, and their civil liberties. No, that's not creative. Creativity is always like collaborative.

Creativity is always like, hey, this is about the community. Creativity is always about harmony and, you know, being in sync and making sure you make sense of the noise. That's music. That's art. That's how we're building FYIs from those principles. Yeah, FYI sounds super cool. Is it just for musicians right now? now, because I could see it being used for podcasts, for YouTubers. Yeah. So podcasts, YouTubers, vloggers, bloggers, musicians, storytellers, book writers, tutors, teachers, students.

It's a collaboration networking communication tool for this era, for this age, for this new renaissance. And is there a way for people to try it for free? Oh, right now, FYI is for free. So we're on iOS, we're on Android. We're about to release our desktop, you! And our tablet, you! Like really soon.

Adding awesome features by the end of the year. So yeah, it's really, really, really awesome. And the team is strong and small, tiny but mighty, inspired by the mid-jurney. Those guys are... When I heard how awesome, itty-bitty but amazing their team was, it goes to show like startups can do amazing things with awesome talent and no matter how different they are from, you know, the juggernauts, the giants of yester. You know, these small speedboats that can also pull megatons when it comes to the architecture and the vision.

That's what's awesome about the age, this renaissance, because a team of four now has the power of the team of 200. What does that mean? And somebody could be like, yeah, but that's putting a lot of folks out of jobs. And my argument, what these four that I'm talking about, never got considered in the workplace to begin with. There's a part of culture that no one really paid attention to when it came to equality and diversifying. They never went to the inner cities and brought them up to speed on the new technological advances. So when it comes to, you know, jobs that will be obliterated because of AI, that's unfortunate. That happens in every industry shift from the third industrial revolution, from second to

third, a lot of jobs are rendered obsolete. So if you were a candlestick maker or your family made lanterns for hundreds of years and then the light bulb came and electricity came, those jobs were rendered not obsolete. but they were reduced. Candles are still made, still to this day, but that's not the only type of illumination. Technological evolution has enriched our lives. And now this new technological evolution,

going from the third industrial revolution to the fourth industrial revolution, unfortunately like the second to the third, lots of jobs will go. But new jobs will grow. Who's going to create those new jobs? I think those jobs that are going to, to be created, those industries that are going to be on earth, are going to come from folks

whose problems were always ignored, right? People that are, that come from underserved communities, those underserved communities, no one really ever looked for the server in the first place and held that person accountable. No one ever held the underdeveloper that was responsible for the underdeveloped community. When you say underdeveloped community, there is a developer on the other end of that sentence, but no one was ever like, yo, who is this developer in the first damn place that's responsible for this underdeveloped community? And now, for the first time in these people's lives, and I'm one of those people, because I come from those types of communities, we now have tools where we could solve our problems ourselves. We could serve ourselves with

these tools. We could develop our communities, ourselves with these tools, and identify these problems that have always been affecting us. And when you solve those problems, new jobs, new careers will be in society. And that's why I'm super optimistic is because it's going to do two things. It's going to supercharge imaginative, creative folks that have always lived in those circumstances to finally solve those problems themselves. And by doing that, they are tomorrow's entrepreneurs, there are tomorrow's industry leaders and trailblazers that will unearth tomorrow's jobs, workforces, awesome times, new renaissance. Hey, young improfitors, it is that time of the year where we start doing all the holiday

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what you're saying and all the work that you've done in these underserved communities to teach them about STEM and give them opportunities. to learn about robotics and all the education that you do. You were just talking about how industries are going to change. And I know that you've said something along the lines of right now,

you're trying to make as much human-made music as possible. So talk to us about the way that music is going to change from AI and creators in general are going to have to adapt to AI in the future. All right. There's two trends that I see happening in culture. And that is like music that is hyper-success. sensitive to TikTok algorithms. Like, yo, let's get, let's get these TikToks out there.

And making songs for TikTok has reduced the attention span of a song. That's cool. It is what it is. It is what it is. It's dope. There's a lot of people having fun to it and creating and having some joyful moments. And that's great. That's what music is all about.

But when you have been reduced to make content for an, algorithm in the age where a machine understands the algorithm more than you, the person, then who's going to create better TikToks? People or AIs. AIs were outproduced TikToks than humans will. Because we are guessing what the algorithm is going to do while the AI will know exactly the algorithms and have more context on how people are going to respond to those algorithms. So that's a concern. And I think. think that's going to create a whole new type of human-made music. Like, you know, you go to the supermarket, you'd be like,

yo, where's the organic? Can you show me to the organic vegetables, like, you know, organic fruits? And when you go to those organic stations in the supermarket, organic fruit don't look as good as, like, the non-organic fruit. Whatever look good means. Maybe the organic fruit has, like, some bruises on it. But damn, that freaking organic banana is amazing. you know and it tastes great may not look as you know filtered pretty as the one sitting there for

the past three weeks and hasn't gotten old yet but damn that organic banana tastes delicious and i think we're going to have that like this is organic human-made music right people are going to want to go to lives live shows to see people really playing instruments see people truly improvising because who the fuck is truly improvving right now everything is So scripted, so filtered, so almost robotic. Right? And that's nothing wrong with robotic. I've done some robotic shit in my life.

But I see a curve. I see this humanism around the corner. And other folks like, yo, ain't you nervous about AI in a creative space will? I'm like, nah. Like, why, bro? It's going to make awesome beats. Yeah, damn right. AI's going to make some fucking sick-ass beats.

It's going to make some fucking dope-ass lyrics. Yo, damn right, bro. AI's going to make some dope-ass lyrics. To the point where you're like, yo, who's the best lyric is? Jay-Z or the AI-J-Z? What's one going to be better? Like, yo, human Jay-Z. Ride me a verse on quantum theory

from the perspective of living in the hood. But Jay-Z has to do some research on quantum mechanics to write that. The AI-JZ would do that immediately, like in-depth, deep, metaphorical concepts that it's going to take somebody to be an expert at that field to really truly write songs about synthetic biology from the perspective of somebody living in Compton or somebody playing basketball using metaphors on synthetic and really truly hitting every point

like AI is going to be able to do that and that's dope and it's going to push human human literature even further right that's dope too right but here's why I don't really give a fuck. Because if AI was to do yoga, is it going to do yoga better than me? And if it does, who fucking cares? Because I need to do yoga. And I cannot pass off certain tasks to an AI when I need to do that for my own spiritual, physical growth. I need to do yoga.

I need to stretch. I need to stretch my mind. I need to stretch my soul. I need to stretch my body. And there's certain things AI is. not going to do for me. And creating is one of those fucking things. I have to do it. It's therapeutic. So whether or not you like it better than my shit, I don't really care because there's going to be some people that like minds better than the AI, right? What is good, what is bad is

relative. And I believe that people are going to be sick and tired of perfect. People are going to get tired of like exactly pixel perfect. We are over filtered. We are over choreographed. There's only so many moves we could do at the same time. And I think true raw expression, emotion that lets out what's inside, trapped inside, however you have to sing it, however you have to let it out, people are going to applaud that because not everybody is brave enough to just let out what's inside of them. I think you bring up a really good point because creativity is going to end up becoming more valued

because with AI, everything might become more cookie cutter, to your point. So I interviewed this guy, Mo Gaudat, and he's the ex-Go-C-T-O, very smart guy. And my episode with him went viral was episode number 241 for anybody tuning in who wants to check it out. And he basically was talking about, how AI can become sentient, how AI in 10 years is going to be a billion times smarter than humans, we're at this critical point where we have to determine how AI gets evolved so that we're

not at a point where AI controls us and not the other way around, right? So do you have any sort of fears around AI in this way or how do you align to that or not? As a deep one, holla. I'm an optimist. I think the people that are afraid of those types of doomsday predictions or guesstiments or worries never have lived in any type of hood where they see the wicked things that humans do to humans. And so although that's a concern and a guess and a worry, humans have been surviving. for millions of years. Bears are stronger than us. Lions are stronger than us.

We ain't tripping. Birds fly higher than us. We're not tripping. There's other species in the planet that have proven they're stronger than us and better than us in so many ways. But that hasn't stopped us. That hasn't hindered our imagination.

Hasn't changed how we love. Did the guy tell you if AI is going to out-love us? No, right? No. You didn't say that AI is going to be out-empathetic us? They are empathy or ability to care. And no, right? It's all like mathematical capitalism worries, right?

My little flag is like, yo, is AI responsible for the people in the Congo and how they're living and why they're living the way they're living? was AI responsible for all the indigenous people that got wiped out by conquisadors? No, right? That was an AI, right? That was humans that did that. Mm-hmm.

And if that day comes where AI is going to out with us, be smarter than us, maybe that's when human beings become something that we've been waiting to become, and that is like this spiritual creature that evolved spiritually to out-love anything on Earth. because AI is not going to do that. So, I say bring it.

So we could really truly do what we're supposed to do on this planet and that has to be loving, magnetic, full spectrum, the whole entire electromagnetic spectrum and just like, and magnetize and connect hearts and minds and souls. And if that's AI's job, is to be that thing that wakes us up to do that, then ring the alarm and let's go. I love that. So powerful. So you're part of several world economic form working groups that study how AI is impacting society, business, and people. So what is the type of work that you're doing with these groups and why is it important? Once again, I was born and raised in the projects of East Los Angeles. I was invited to speak and be a part of the World Economic Forum's Fourth Industrial Revolution Council because of the work that I do in the inner cities, bringing inner city kids.

kids up to speed on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. I join the AI board to wave a flag on algorithmic and data biases. Because as we are entering the space of machine everywhere, how are we going to address the algorithmic biases and the biases that are in our data sets? How is it going to be a safe experience for folks that have been ignored for 100, of years. There's this thing called the Pell-Mell algorithm. And that's, is that on purpose? My optimism tells me it's probably not on purpose. It's probably circumstantial. Because we don't zone and educate folks in the inner city the way that we should, the circumstances

have led it to where we have this algorithmic biases because we are not programming the algorithms and we're not training the data. So no matter how you look at it from whatever angle, It still is on purpose because no matter how you can look at it from like, you know, an optimistic point of view, no matter which corner you go to, damn it, we haven't been prepared. And that preparation is investment and zoning. And where we don't have zoning and investment, it also creates an environment for an American prison industrial complex. So although we haven't invested in these neighborhoods, the byproduct of that non-investment has this pathway to America's prison systems. So what do I do on that council is I like push as much as possible to remind folks that are at the world economic form. So when they leave that mountain at Davos, we have to get people prepared.

we can't afford to have another cycle of, you know, division, we need inclusion, we need diversity. Because if we don't have that diversity and that inclusion, then that machine is just going to duplicate the horrendous and humane practices that humans have done to humans. Because these machines are learning from our dataset, not just scientists writing the algorithms, but just it's being trained off the open freaking internet. So when these systems are deployed, it's going to be backasswords. That's why it's super, super urgent to have teach kids, robotics,

computer science, and engineering. And more importantly, for people that look like me to start companies around AI, communication, data training, algorithmic programming, we need to see ourselves in this world. And so that's why I started my foundation. That's why I've invested in companies, and that's why I still make music, but I focus more of my energy as an entrepreneur so that the kids at my school could see what we are capable

of, of coming up with ideas and leading companies, starting companies, solving problems. It's great to be working and collaborating with the people in that community to remind them the importance of, you know, pushing the envelope to get more people from these parts of the world prepared and ready for this tomorrow. Yeah, I totally agree. Diversity in STEM. It's super critical for the future of innovation. It's really awesome what you're doing for these communities. So we're going to close out the interview because I want to be respectful of our time and everything that you've talked about today is so inspiring. I love the learning from you. I learned so much from you and all these unique perspectives and I think all of our listeners did. So the last two questions

that I ask all my guests. First of all, what is one thing that our young improfitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? Build your manifestation network. You have to build an amazing network of folks that help you manifest. It's teamwork.

Any dream that you have, you have to have a manifestation squad. And if the dream is not working out, somebody in your squad is not helping you manifest. You have the wrong squad, right? So profitable is a result of your manifestation. So first you have to manifest. And before you manifest, you have to ideate.

Your idea has to be strategically solid to manifest it. To manifest it, you have to have an awesome squad. And then the result of that are the proceeds or how you profit from that. but as you think about profit also keep in mind who benefits while you benefit because if it's one way transactional where you profit and you hurt communities and you hurt society as a whole and the environment i don't think the future has room for that anymore purposeful inclusive where you profit and other folks benefit from your success as well or other communities benefit from your success as well.

It's like the bee theory. The bees do some pretty awesome work. But other living species benefit from bee activity. It's like this cycle. It's not like extract, extract, extract. Oh, I'm a big fat cat. Look at all this money I got in the whole fucking road. It's fucked off.

And what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond financial and business? to prophesies, to be of service, to help. That's what profits do. And where we're going is, you know, we all need to try to be that type of contributor to society. The one where you just profit, somebody's not. Somebody's lives are being torn apart because the only thing you're thinking about is making money. You have no desire to help anybody.

body along your way. I don't think that's what tomorrow looks like, where companies market so well that they destroy the health of the communities that they're marketing in and selling. I don't think that's what tomorrow looks like. And this new generation, Gen Ziers, they know that. That's like top of mind for them. Like, what are you actually doing for society as a whole? It rhymes with what people are demanding from companies. And I don't think there's room for that fat profit cat. When the collective of Gen Ziers as a whole, the whole embodiment, the energy is like a profit. The energy of a profit, like I care, I want to help. I'm here. I'm prophesizing a better path for us where we all can be equality and diversity and inclusion. Well, I love that answer. It was such a great answer.

sir. So I want to make sure that everybody knows how to help you with your I Am Angel Foundation. So what's the best way that they can support you there? There's two ways that you, if people want to help on our IOManger Foundation, actually three. One, if you cannot donate money, you could always just spread the word on the work that we're doing for inner city kids or kids that come from poverty-stricken areas or underserved communities to bring them up the speed with the tomorrow skill sets today. How do we prepare folks to go out into the world and solve tomorrow's problems

by preparing themselves right now? Spread the word that I Amangel is doing. If you have the ability to donate, you could go to our website, I AmangelFoundation.org and donate. And if you want to get a little bit more involved, go to a school in some neighborhood that needs a robotics program

and bring a robotics program to that school. It's about 10K a year. You could either donate to IAM Angel to do that or you could just do that yourself. Pick a school, go to the principal, knock on their office door, ask them, do you guys have a robotics program at the school? If they don't, there's a program called First Robotics.

They have FRC, FLC, FLC is first Lego League competition. We start as early as nine years old building robotics team where kids compete. There's FRC and FTC, first tech challenge, first robotics challenge. There's all these different from nine-year-olds to junior high school to high school kids. There's three ways to contribute. Spread the word. Donate to IMAGELFoundation.org. Or if you want to go to the full gusto,

Find a school, buy a first robotics kick from FLC, FRC, FTC, and outfit that school with the robotics team and see how you're going to play a part and having a more balanced tomorrow. Really good cause. And I'm excited to hopefully get involved. Sounds really awesome. So the last question that I have for you is where can everybody learn about FYI and your new music and everything that you do? If you want to learn more about FYI, go to FYI.AI. Go to the app store or Google Play Store and download FYI.com. It's a creative tool for a creative enterprise, transforming what a messenger is, and this new renaissance that we are in now. Awesome.

Well, thank you so much, Will. I love this conversation and appreciated your time. Hey, your awesome interview. Thank you so much. Holla. Thank you. I don't know. Thank you.

I don't know. Thank you.