will.i.am Talks Ethical AI Education and Innovative Agent Solutions

Summary

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Bloomberg Talks: will.i.am Talks Ethical AI Education and Innovative Agent Solutions

Date: May 5, 2026
Guest: will.i.am (Founder and CEO of FYI AI, Grammy-winning musician, tech entrepreneur, AI investor)
Host: Bloomberg
Theme: Exploring will.i.am’s approach to AI education, ethical agent design, and the vision behind his AI ventures and innovations.

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Episode Overview

This episode features will.i.am discussing the intersection of technology, education, and creativity in the age of AI. The conversation highlights his efforts to democratize agent-based AI, his hands-on teaching experiences, the importance of ethical development, and his vision for inclusive, user-controlled AI products through his company FYI AI.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Preparing the Next Generation for AI

• Teaching at ASU:
  • will.i.am describes his course “The Agent Itself” at Arizona State University. Students start with no agent experience and leave the course having built their own “agentic hero.”
  • Emphasizes practical, ethical, and creative agent-building:

    “They come in with zero that you leave with the agentic hero. We guide them through ethics… reminding them that they have to be ethical, they're accountable for the agent that they're going to be deploying out there into society.” (Will.i.am, [01:14])

• Ethics at the Core:
  • The curriculum includes examining the pitfalls seen in the social media era, focusing on ethical responsibility and impact.
• Notable Student Projects:
  • Shares an example of a student, Claudia Co, who created an agent solution for vendors in the Global South with limited internet access. Her agent can be accessed via phone call, expanding accessibility and opportunity.

    “[She] created a key amazing solution to vendors in the Global south… giving them personal agents… accessible on a phone call.” (Will.i.am, [01:54])

2. Demystifying and Humanizing AI Agents

• Public Concerns:
  • The host brings up fears about AI agents replacing jobs.
• MoFo the AI Teddy Bear:
  • Will.i.am introduces “MoFo,” an AI-powered teddy bear designed not as a toy, but as an expressive agent tool that merges creativity and technology.

    “It's a tool to get work done in the form of something that's expressive that you could communicate with... on the box it says I am not a toy.” (Will.i.am, [02:49])

  • MoFo uses “text to expression” architecture, allowing richer, non-verbal cues beyond text and emojis.

    “The agent's able to express itself and give you cues on your digital world where not everything should be verbalized…” (Will.i.am, [02:49])

• Personalization and Creativity:
  • Emphasizes that such agents should reflect individuality and are as much art as tech.

3. FYI AI: Vision and Solutions

• Mission Statement:
  • Through his I Am Angel Foundation (founded 2008), will.i.am has long promoted STEM education for underrepresented youth, leading by example:

    "When you tell a kid from the inner city to take a science, technology, engineering, mathematics course and you're not doing that yourself, how can you expect them to take you seriously?" (Will.i.am, [04:07])

  • FYI AI seeks to simplify workflows and empower users with true data ownership and privacy.
• Product Innovations:
  • FYI AI offers a messenger platform that enables sending large files, integrating tools typically scattered across platforms (WhatsApp, Dropbox, etc.).
  • Every user is given a personal encryption key, ensuring private, user-owned data.

    “Each person... is granted an encryption key… your data and your privacy is all locked under a key that you own, that you keep, your data is yours.” (Will.i.am, [04:33])

• Personal Agent Tool:
  • Users can build their own agents, reflecting their beliefs and aspirations, integrating with other systems.

    "You can create and build your agent that reflects your beliefs, your concerns, your point of view and your aspirations and where you want to go in life so your agent knows you." (Will.i.am, [05:27])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On AI Education and Responsibility:

  “We guide them through ethics, pointing out some of the tripwires that happened during social media, reminding them that they have to be ethical, they're accountable for the agent that they're going to be deploying out there into society.”
  — will.i.am ([01:18])

• On Creativity and Technology:

  “It's a fusion of creativity and technology… an amazing art project. Creativity at its highest form.”
  — will.i.am ([03:32])

• On Data Ownership:

  “Your data and your privacy is all locked under a key that you own, that you keep, your data is yours.”
  — will.i.am ([04:33])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:25–01:14: Host introduces will.i.am, his background, and course at ASU
• 01:14–02:22: will.i.am discusses teaching ethics-focused agent design and standout student projects
• 02:22–03:52: Conversation about AI agents, public fears, and MoFo expressive agent project
• 03:52–05:43: FYI AI — founding purpose, user empowerment, product features, and upcoming integration plans

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Takeaways

This episode offers a unique, hopeful perspective on AI’s role in society. will.i.am stands out as a champion for ethical, educational, and creative AI development—rooted in inclusivity and true user empowerment. His projects aim to demystify and humanize AI, opening opportunities for students and underrepresented communities while ensuring privacy and individual agency remain central.

Transcript

[Indiana University Announcer]

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[Podcast Host 1]

want to talk about AI. I mean kind of across the platform. We've talked a lot about it from a business perspective. We talked about it from AI and the phys world here. We also want to talk about a little bit more conceptually and we want to bring into this conversation right now. Will I am. He's one of the more credible celebrity the tech crossover stories out there. Of course. He's the founder and CEO of F why I nine time Grammy winner, co founder of the Black Eyed Peas, founding Equity Stakeholder and Beats Electronics. He's an investor in anthropic and OpenAI and Nvidia.

[Will.i.am]

And I think you just taught a

[Podcast Host 1]

college course over at asu.

[Will.i.am]

Yes.

[Podcast Host 1]

You help students sort of create their own agents. William, welcome to the program.

[Will.i.am]

Oh, thank you for having me. It's good to see you guys talk about this.

[Podcast Host 1]

I mean, I mean we talk a lot about this idea of preparing the younger generation for this world they're going to come into. It's going to be a lot different from the world our generation came into with regards to technology and AI. I mean, what were you talking to those kids about?

[Will.i.am]

So the students come into our class that I created, the course I created called the agent itself. They come in with zero that you leave with the agentic hero. We guide them through ethics, pointing out some of the tripwires that happened during social media, reminding them that they have to be ethical, they're accountable for the agent that they're going to be deploying out there into society. And some of the students, the things that they've turned in for their final it was a 16 week credited course. Amazing companies by pointing out solutions to problems, pointing out problems and creating solutions to that problem. A woman by the Name of Claudia Co. Called a key amazing solution to vendors in the Global south that aren't connected to the Internet don't have, you know, the knowledge of building agents going there, giving them personal agents that they can build and that agent being accessible on a phone call.

[Podcast Host 1]

Yeah, so with this idea, when we talk about agents, I mean it scares a lot of people. Some people say, oh, agent, that just means somebody is going to take my job or something like that. Now you've done a lot to sort of not only educate people about this But a product that you had had a teddy bear. Was it mofo?

[Will.i.am]

Teddy bear, yes.

[Podcast Host 1]

Okay.

[Will.i.am]

All right.

[Podcast Host 1]

But this is AI within that. Basically an agent. Agent. AI in that was the idea to kind of make this a little bit. I mean, I guess teddy bears in human, but for lack of a better word, to humanize this a little bit more or what?

[Will.i.am]

No, it's just the. It's a fusion of creativity and technology. So the mofo is not a toy. So on the box it says I am not a toy. Yeah, it's a. It's a tool to get work done in the form of something that's expressive that you could communicate with. We have our text to expression architecture, so we know what text to speech is, we know what ASR is, we know what LLMs are. We have this text to expression, so the agent's able to express itself and give you cues on your digital world where not everything should be verbalized, right?

[Podcast Host 1]

Yeah.

[Will.i.am]

So there's other cues that you can do that are outside of an emoji that you have to type in text. So it allows the agent to express itself for things that you are going to deem with you and that device personal to you. But more importantly, it's. It's an amazing art project. Creativity at its highest form.

[Podcast Host 2]

I do want to talk a little bit about FYI AI and first of all, let me say some of the investments you've made, a lot of investors would like to have that portfolio. But when it comes to what you've created there, what is sort of the mission statement? What are you trying to accomplish with FYI AI?

[Will.i.am]

So two so have a. I started my philanthropic endeavors in 2008 with my I Am angel foundation, telling kids in the inner cities that they should apply themselves in this conversation around, you know, job creation, career creation, and industry designing. Like, use your imagination to its full potential. But when you tell a kid from the inner city to take a science, technology, engineering, mathematics course and you're not doing that yourself, how. How can you expect them to take you seriously? So I started FYI AI to show them, like, hey, if I can do it, you can do it. One of the things that we wanted to solve is how people communicate and get work done on a messenger. To work on a Messenger, you need five different products to work on WhatsApp, you need Dropbox, you need WeTransfer, you need zip files, you need all these types of things. So on FYI AI, you could send gig size files on the messenger. Each person I don't like using the word user is granted an encryption key. So to ensure that your data and your privacy is all locked under a key that you own, that you keep, your data is yours. Then we've started building Personal Agents. This our personal agent tool so you can create and build your agent that reflects your beliefs, your concerns, your point of view and your aspirations and where you want to go in life so your agent knows you. And we're about to show how our system integrates with other legacy systems in the next couple of weeks.

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