Van Jones (2:57)

Yes.

Peter Diamandis (2:57)

And we kicked off not only just a partnership, but a friendship.

Van Jones (3:00)

Yeah, absolutely. And it was awesome. I've been recommending your book the future is faster than you think to literally everybody. And for some reason I didn't know you're going to be there. I come around the corner and there's Peter Diamandis. I was like, holy crap. So, no, it's been extraordinary to get a chance to have my team and your team working together to get these exponential thinking concepts out to folks who just have missed the memo, but who are wide open. And I tell you one thing that's amazing is folks from communities that have been overlooked or underestimated. Disruption is great for them.

Peter Diamandis (3:38)

Yeah, it's a chance to catch up.

Van Jones (3:39)

It's a chance to catch up. It's like we're going to disrupt the status quo. We're going to disrupt these schools. Great. Nobody's holding back. So it's awesome.

Peter Diamandis (3:48)

Yeah. And Will, last time I saw you, you were in the ancient Greek stadium in Athens for the first global and you were blasting at 2 billion decibels.

Will.i.am (4:00)

Yeah. That was magical.

Peter Diamandis (4:03)

That was amazing.

Will.i.am (4:04)

We just announced Panama.

Peter Diamandis (4:06)

Yeah, I saw that.

Will.i.am (4:07)

So Panama will be this year for the robotics and for people who don't.

Peter Diamandis (4:12)

Know, this is First Robotics. This is Dean Kamen's gig. He's the grand pubah of first. But. But here will you have been one of the greatest amplifiers. And how many teams do you fund?

Will.i.am (4:30)

Over 500. And we have served about 15,000 students in LA district.

Peter Diamandis (4:35)

Amazing.

Will.i.am (4:36)

We've sent kids to Dartmouth, to Brown, Stanford for a STEM curriculum and. Yeah, continue the work.

Peter Diamandis (4:48)

We'll talk about this.

Will.i.am (4:48)

Our hunch was right, like when we started in 2008, that the world will be more technological. And how do you prepare folks for this technological world? And here we are in the midst of a technological transformation on a societal level that will change how we work, how we, how we do pretty much everything.

Peter Diamandis (5:12)

Yeah, how we, how we're parents, how we raise our kids, how we govern our nations, everything.

Van Jones (5:17)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (5:18)

Every single industry is going to change one thing. Is I don't think people are prepared for how fast things are going to change. I mean, Will, you've been at the front end building companies and building technology to enable creatives to use this tech to become more creative and to go faster and deeper and bigger and global, and that's been beautiful. I grabbed two quotes from each of you that I thought was really powerful. And Van, this is the one I heard, and I've tweeted and I've told everybody about it, and I heard you say this at Zeitgeist, at Google. Zeitgeist. And it's. AI is not a hand grenade that blows up your life. It's a jetpack to set you free.

Van Jones (6:04)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, certainly if we choose it to be that, it definitely can be that. You know, one of the things about Will, I am. I never heard of AI except as sort of maybe some abstract science fiction stuff. And. And so he asked me to come over to FYI, which is here in Los Angeles. And it's kind of like this incredible beehive of activity and creatives and artists and technical, technological people. And he sat me down and showed me his AI. And this was four or five years ago.

Peter Diamandis (6:38)

I saw an early, early version on your phone.

Van Jones (6:40)

Yeah. And I was like, what are you.

Will.i.am (6:42)

What?

Van Jones (6:43)

What? What? Like, I thought you're gonna, you know, hit me with a new beat or something like a new beat in human civilization. I'm like, what the hell?

Peter Diamandis (6:51)

No. So Will builds hardware and software.

Van Jones (6:54)

Yeah. It's nuts. And so that really. I mean, I had the chance to. I did. Yes. We code working with Prince, you know, just trying to get some basic, you know, coding stuff going, but he had gone to a completely different level. And, you know, it's just remarkable. And so, you know, now, you know, people are beginning to catch up to the beginning of his first sentence, and he's like, three, you know, trilogies later.

Peter Diamandis (7:21)

His own journey, definitely.

Van Jones (7:23)

Right.

Peter Diamandis (7:23)

I mean, you're five, six years solidly into this, and you just started your podcast with your AI co host. What's your AI co host name?

Will.i.am (7:33)

So, yeah, the first Persona agent that we built was Fiona.

Peter Diamandis (7:37)

That's right.

Will.i.am (7:38)

And now we have. Just based on FYI, we're going to run out of F names. So we have Fiona, Felicia, Fiera, Finn. Yeah. Philip, Felix. This guy named Fito Feito is like ultra, like, expressive. The same with Felicia.

Peter Diamandis (8:02)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (8:03)

Felicia is like the most colorful, expressive agent that we have. And we moved out of Fs. Now we have Mr. K for.

Peter Diamandis (8:14)

It'S like Men in Black here. Yeah.

Will.i.am (8:16)

So Mr. K is in collaboration with our partnership with LG. LG. Mr. K is Korean. All things Korea, South Korea, K pop. But it's a LG agent Persona because we're. We. We. We're deploying our AI on their speakers and eventually TVs, and then we have other. Other partners that we're about to announce.

Van Jones (8:44)

But, yeah.

Will.i.am (8:45)

So Fiona was the first agent Persona that we built.

Peter Diamandis (8:48)

You imagine everybody's going to end up having their buddies, friends, as AI agents, your most close confidant. I mean, the first AI agent version I've ever heard of. My favorite is Jarvis from Ironman. Jarvis is there. Jarvis takes you from wherever you are to wherever you want to go. It's a jetpack, right. It's leveling the playing field. And since Iron man is part of the Avengers, let's go there. You came forward with an idea called Make Wakanda Real.

Van Jones (9:24)

Yes.

Peter Diamandis (9:25)

That was good.

Will.i.am (9:26)

I like how you did that.

Van Jones (9:28)

Thank you. Thank you.

Peter Diamandis (9:29)

Smooth. He's smooth. Thank you. Listen, there's no one smoother than you, my friend.

Will.i.am (9:37)

I was like, wow, that works. That was nice how you did that.

Peter Diamandis (9:41)

So for those who haven't heard of your program, your effort, what is it and why are you doing it? Because it's going to set the basis for this whole conversation.

Van Jones (9:52)

Well, Will I am is so far ahead of humanity in a lot of ways in terms of his ability to bring culture, art, spirituality, political consciousness, technology. And then when you take a step back from him, there's a big gulf in terms of what's going on in the black community and the kind of conversations that's going on. And so, for me, I thought it was really important, since we have someone who's already such a pioneer. How do you get other people at least engaging with the conversation? Well, luckily, Wakanda, which is in the Marvel superhero universe, it's a black African nation that is the most technologically advanced in the world. They're using technology for good. They're a heroic country. They also have culture. I'm like this. I said we should use this metaphor as an answer back to the despair, an answer back to the loss of.

Peter Diamandis (10:56)

Feeling of being left behind.

Van Jones (10:59)

And a reality of being left behind in a lot of ways. Where, you know, we're past Obama. You know, it's not a hope and change kind of moment. And there's a lot of people who are really giving up. A politics of resentment in the black community, a politics of despair in the black community. And how do you Fix that. You gotta fix it with hope. But it's gotta be hope that has something to do with today.

Peter Diamandis (11:21)

Yeah.

Van Jones (11:21)

And so about a year and a half ago, we said, well, why don't we go to FYI where I got my brain blown open with all this stuff and just bring the whole community there. And he opened the doors, and we had a simple event called Make Wakanda Real. And it was an amazing thing. Several hundred people showed up from the community. We could not get them to leave. And this guy breaks out in the middle of. We're doing our talk, our interview, and giving me no notice, as usual. He just pulls out his phone and the Persona on his phone. They start having a debate and arguments, and people's jaws are hanging on the ground. Nobody's ever seen anything like this before.

Peter Diamandis (12:03)

I've seen the video clip. Yeah.

Van Jones (12:05)

And it just. And it just. And it really. It really started something. So now we have this whole movement now that came out. Out of. Out of a will.

Peter Diamandis (12:12)

I am Shop, everybody. Peter here. If you're enjoying this episode, please help me get the message of abundance out to the world. We're truly living during the most extraordinary time ever in human history. And I want to get this mindset out to everyone. Please subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts and turn on notifications so we can let you know when the next episode is being dropped. All right, back to our episode. So we'll take it. Take it a step further. What's your. What success look like for this. For this effort in five years time? I don't think anybody can predict 10 years, but five years, maybe that's a deep one.

Will.i.am (12:50)

First, we have to, like, address growth and what's actually happening on the continent of Africa and what's not happening on the continent of Africa.

Peter Diamandis (13:03)

But this is beyond just Africa. This is inner city youth in L. A. In Atlanta. Yeah, but every place, right?

Will.i.am (13:09)

Yeah. But Make Wakanda Real is based on this. Wakanda.

Peter Diamandis (13:14)

Yes. Okay.

Will.i.am (13:15)

And this growth that's happening on Earth in Africa. The majority of youth on Earth is in Africa.

Peter Diamandis (13:26)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (13:27)

That means 2040, 2050. The majority of the folks that are, you know, leading companies, working at companies because of the youth population in Africa is going to be African.

Peter Diamandis (13:43)

I. I think people don't realize the demographics here, and I just want to take a second to address that. We've got. China has been a dominant player. India has overtaken China in terms of the largest nation on the planet now 1.41 billion people. The majority of the world Putting Africa aside is in a retrenchment mode. The population is dropping throughout the rest of Asia, most of Europe, the US and so forth. And I've said this before, I think India is going to surpass China. And then what surpasses that ultimately is Africa. Because of Africa's youth, because of its resources. Those two things together give it sort of this demographics and destiny.

Will.i.am (14:26)

So when you put that into context, make Wakanda world is what. So that means 2060, a lot of people are going to look half black, half Chinese, half black, half Indian, which is awesome. It's a beautiful mix. So that collaboration that's going to help Africa, boom. Is at China. Africa, it's already happening.

Peter Diamandis (14:56)

This is the, the, what do you call it, the Belt. Belt and Road program in China.

Will.i.am (15:01)

It's already happening. That's awesome. Is it Indian Africa, That's. That's going to be an amazing collaboration. Is it African American Africa? And that's what Make Wakanda Real is for African Americans. Borrowing from a Disney film on the Black Panthers, which in America, the Black Panthers were like dunzoed by American infiltration.

Peter Diamandis (15:31)

That's interesting. Right, Because.

Will.i.am (15:32)

So just use it using these metaphors.

Peter Diamandis (15:35)

Time has, has. Has dulled that one down. And, and the Avengers has brought Black Panther to have a positive connotation.

Will.i.am (15:44)

So. So you know that. You see that I started there to show you where, like, where Africa is the continent. Then there's the Congo. So if there was a. Reese, a mineral, rare mineral that is metaphorically like Vibranium.

Peter Diamandis (16:01)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (16:02)

With Vibranium, it's what's happening in the Congo now. So that metaphor is not like, you.

Peter Diamandis (16:08)

Know, it's not, it's not a huge stretch. It's real.

Will.i.am (16:11)

It's pretty real.

Peter Diamandis (16:12)

For those who don't know. I mean, you're. You're mining various elements and minerals in the Congo that are required for your cell phone, your CPUs or GPUs.

Van Jones (16:22)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (16:23)

And so. And that being said, you said GPUs. I'm going to land this fact on your word. There. There are no GPUs on the continent.

Peter Diamandis (16:32)

None. Yeah.

Will.i.am (16:34)

So here we are talking about make Wakanda real. And the African continent has no GPUs. So I partnered with this guy by the name of Strive.

Peter Diamandis (16:44)

I know, Strive. Yeah.

Will.i.am (16:45)

Yeah. So they're going to be re. They're. The Cassava is our, our partner to launch FYI on the continent. And on March 17, we have an announcement to bring a cluster of GPUs to the continent and we'll announce our partner on March 17 and bringing, you know, the first, you know, mega cluster of. Of gpus to the. To the continent. It'll be like four nations. Four or five nations that we're going to.

Peter Diamandis (17:15)

Where do you think you'll base them?

Will.i.am (17:19)

Egypt.

Peter Diamandis (17:20)

So basically. Basically the entrepreneurial. More entrepreneurial nations there.

Will.i.am (17:23)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (17:24)

You know, I just did a hour and a half panel with Robert Smith, chairman of Vista.

Van Jones (17:30)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (17:31)

He was with us at Davos.

Peter Diamandis (17:32)

Yeah. And I was with him last week in Miami at the FII Summit.

Van Jones (17:36)

The second richest black man in the world.

Peter Diamandis (17:37)

Yes.

Van Jones (17:38)

Multi billionaire genius.

Peter Diamandis (17:39)

He is brilliant in the States.

Van Jones (17:42)

Second. Oh, he first in the States, Yeah.

Will.i.am (17:45)

There's like other Africans that are richer than him in Africa. Yes, that's good.

Peter Diamandis (17:50)

On a resource economy and land and so forth. But anyway, the point is, we had a conversation about how do you support the Global south in getting access to this technology, to their own large language models, their own GPUs. And one of the biggest questions is Today's large, largest LLMs are based upon a Western canon.

Will.i.am (18:16)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (18:17)

And there is a need for cultural preservation. This is beyond just Africa. It's for every country in the world. How do you preserve the culture of a country and train up a set of large language models for that country that are based in. How do you. How do you go and capture the stories of the grandmothers and grandfathers in a lot of countries which have no written language even.

Van Jones (18:42)

Look, I just want to add, first of all, I think that a new civilization is being born as we speak. We were talking about, you know, kids. I have two little kids. One's three years old, just got a diapers, the other one's still in diapers. They're not gonna live in the same human civilization I grew up in. My daughter's first crush is probably gonna be an AI, right. Like, you gotta get your brain ready.

Peter Diamandis (19:22)

My two boys are 13, and my wife and I were worried about, you know, what is it gonna be like for them. And I'm concerned. Pornography when I was growing up, was a playboy.

Van Jones (19:33)

Yeah. Go buy it at the store when nobody's looking.

Peter Diamandis (19:36)

Yeah, exactly.

Van Jones (19:37)

Now it's in your back pocket all day.

Peter Diamandis (19:38)

It's crazy.

Van Jones (19:39)

Yeah, so. So you have that. But if you think about it, okay, I've got these two little people. My. My daughter's first crush may well be in AI. When it's time for her to have children, grandkids for me, she may open up a laptop or do some kind of holographic interface. And with biotech tools she might design my grandkids. Okay. And then, you know, heaven forbid, when she, you know, dies in 90 years, 100 years.

Peter Diamandis (20:07)

Let's go a little further than that. Yeah.

Van Jones (20:11)

120 years, 150 years, she might be buried on the moon or on Mars.

Peter Diamandis (20:15)

Yeah.

Van Jones (20:15)

Because by then we'll be a fully face bearing civilization. So that's not the civilization I grew up in.

Peter Diamandis (20:21)

Yeah.

Van Jones (20:22)

Okay. So the question is this new human civilization that's coming into being, is it going to be human? Is it going to be civilized? That's the question that all of us have a chance to answer over the next decade or so. And so part of what I think we got wrong in the civilization that we're leaving is we left a lot of people out. So there's a lot of overlooked, underestimated communities, including the folks that will I am's been working with since 2008, who have genius, who have insight, who have creativity, who have ideas, who have big problems, which as you always point out, means there's big solutions available. Biggest problems or the biggest solutions you are teaching about. And so what does that mean? What that means is that if you take the most powerful creative tools, which is AI and all this sort of stuff, and you give it to and connect it to these communities that are so powerful in their creativity and their need, you could have a human civilization that is at peace with itself and at peace with the earth. You could solve so many problems, but nothing good happens for poor folks and marginal folks by accident. You've got to have intention, you've got to have strategy Here a lot of people talking about all the good of AI but what I like about what will I am is doing what we're trying to do with make Wakanda real. You actually have to get in there and pull people into this conversation and that. And once you do that, what happens? The sky's the limit you're getting. That's right.

Peter Diamandis (21:50)

Well, do you see this as a great leveling force?

Van Jones (21:53)

The only reparations we haven't gone get?

Peter Diamandis (21:58)

One of the things that you said is AI is a set of tools to help you on your path. Right. You've been at the forefront of traditional media, traditional creative, then you've taken it to non traditional creative and you've been optimistic about AI. Most of the other people in the world in traditional media and creative are scared shitless of AI.

Will.i.am (22:21)

I could see why they're, why they are afraid. There's all the unknowns, all the storytelling that was done really amazing. Hollywood did an awesome job scaring the shit out of us.

Van Jones (22:37)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (22:38)

Thank you. Thank you, James Cameron.

Will.i.am (22:41)

So let's take James Cameron, his perspective of AI, where one company is dominant, one product is taking over. And then let's take George Lucas. There's lots of AIs, lots of robots. That's a democratic one.

Peter Diamandis (22:59)

Can we take Star Trek as well?

Will.i.am (23:01)

Star Trek as well, yeah. Lots of AIs. I think. I think the future looks more like Star wars and Star Trek than it does Terminator. Because Terminator and the Matrix, that's the same film.

Peter Diamandis (23:15)

AI oppression of humans.

Will.i.am (23:18)

Yeah. It's one company.

Peter Diamandis (23:19)

Yes.

Will.i.am (23:23)

Mess up the whole entire civilization and everyone's in a. In some pod living life in the Matrix. So Terminator, Matrix, same movie.

Peter Diamandis (23:33)

Yes.

Will.i.am (23:34)

Prequel, sequel, Star Wars. There's lots of robots, lots of companies. You could say it's driving. Yes. There's an empire. But what you have in that movie are Jedis. You have this like human evolution where it's like everything that was in Star Wars. You could connect that to Aladdin. You could say, hey, what was. What was theory? Mythology that some genie hops out of some device to grant your wishes. You could say that that was productized and made a product that everyone could use in the world of Star wars, where in Aladdin, it was like this coveted. There's one. Oh, my gosh, you have that one. Then they scaled it, made it products, it grew. Now it's in machines. But if you use that theory, those thesis, those metaphors, those myths, there's something in Star wars that is in scriptures that is like this hyper spiritual being that there is now practice how to.

Peter Diamandis (24:47)

Do, how to achieve Joseph Campbell's, you know, hero, Hero. Yeah. Myth, hero, Right. Heroes. Heroes journey.

Will.i.am (24:55)

Yeah. So I. The Star. The Terminator, Matrix. Humans have given up on their spiritual growth, that they just rely on machines so much that the machine is now taken over to the point where. Oh, shit. I used to remember that reality that we was living. Let's plug into that simulation. That's Terminator, Matrix, the Star Wars. If we're going to base things on films, I go with that one because that one has this other one that's like, yo, how do we. How do we. How do we make Jedi's real and Wakanda. Make Wakanda real is awesome.

Van Jones (25:34)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (25:35)

But then after that, we. We Jedis, bro. And then fast forward from that, from that technical dependence and making devices and equipment and tools we still will be faced with. How do we grow? We've seen machines grow. We've seen the Path. The. The investment that it takes to, you know, refine sand, to create silicone, refine.

Peter Diamandis (25:59)

Into one of these.

Will.i.am (26:00)

Some type of mineral to create lithium battery. Imagine. Imagine I came up in here and I was like, hey, yo. So like. And sand dripping off my hand and I got a rock in his hand. You're like, yo, what the you doing? I'm like, yo, talking to bro. Like, yo, are you serious? You sitting there talking to Sam? Yo, you'll check Will out. You need to check and make sure.

Peter Diamandis (26:18)

Check it out.

Van Jones (26:19)

Check him in.

Will.i.am (26:19)

No, I don't think you understand. I'm refining it in my mind. And that. Right. That's literally what you're doing. You're holding refined rare minerals.

Peter Diamandis (26:27)

Yes.

Will.i.am (26:28)

Throwing advanced algorithms, mathematics on it and electricity and you could speak to it. We're going to get to a point where we're like, look what we can do with minerals. How do we advance our spiritual capacity and our. And unlock more of our neural network to be able to be that. To where. Like, that's the reason why I'm not worried about AI. It's because it's going to unlock that superhuman.

Peter Diamandis (26:54)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (26:54)

Not super intelligence. We've seen it in scriptures, we've seen it in myths. The things that, you know, the people that we praise. And I'm not being blasphemous, but in the Bible it says that you too could create miracles as well. Yes, but how do you do that? What is the unlock to do that? We are going to face that future right around the corner.

Peter Diamandis (27:17)

Do you think we're living at a time that is more extraordinary, moving faster than any time in human history? Or do you think our, you know, our equivalent 100 years ago felt that same way when the car and the airplane and all was coming online?

Van Jones (27:32)

I think it's different. And I think.

Will.i.am (27:35)

Just.

Peter Diamandis (27:35)

Just checking. I think I had this conversation with Neil Degrasse Tyson and he was like, no, every generation feels like they're at the pick of the peak of the curve here.

Will.i.am (27:43)

I think it's. I think what we're feeling.

Peter Diamandis (27:45)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (27:48)

It's literally like a hundred years. So every, like 1920 to 2025.

Peter Diamandis (27:55)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (27:55)

Like what was popping off in 2000, in 1925 with the world's Fair and all futurism. The concept of future happened in n. In the early 1900s. The concept of future was not 1825.

Peter Diamandis (28:09)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (28:10)

This concept of tomorrow.

Peter Diamandis (28:11)

Tomorrowland. Yeah.

Will.i.am (28:12)

Is 1925 and. And world. World's Fairs and. And technology and that. That industrial revolution and to. To that person they thought, oh, my gosh, this is it. This is the pinnacle of humanity. Look at what we're doing. We could have our way with stone and craft. We have our way with alchemy. The things that we're. Look what we can do. We could refine aluminum and mend it and fly in it. We could transport things on steam engines and trains. We could defy gravity at that, at the highest order.

Peter Diamandis (28:58)

My words. In one device, and it comes out the other side.

Will.i.am (29:01)

Think about what the world was like in 1925. Imagine Tesla. Not Elon's Tesla. Nikola Tesla. Imagine this dude like the Warden Tower. Imagine, like, yo, yo, yo, yo, check this out. Like, wireless electricity, y'. All. And then the freaking. The Westinghouse and the JP Morgans are like, yo, this guy's gonna. This guy's crazy. Gonna put us out of business, bro. This guy's wacko. He's never gonna. Like, imagine what they thought of Tesla. Like, yo, you want to give away? That's our business, bro. Like, what they say. Philanthropy. Like, what's the business model in free. Imagine what he was thinking about, you know, electromagnetic spectrum and. And the. The concept of, like, RGB and the other side of. Of blue, which. Which is a violet and ultraviolet light, and the other side of red, which is, like, you know, infrared, and the microwaves and then all the different electromagnetic frequencies and the. And the machines you could build on those frequencies. That's coming from the sun. Imagine what the world was like in 1925. Here we are in 2025.

Peter Diamandis (30:01)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (30:01)

And we are thinking like, yo, we have a whole new way of compute. We have a whole new way of, like, advanced mathematics. Same thing happened with Mr. Al Jabbar at the time when they were, you know, fucking around with advanced mathematics then. Which we have are, you know, Aramaic, Abracadabra. I create as I speak.

Peter Diamandis (30:21)

Yes.

Will.i.am (30:21)

Like the same. We. We've been in some version of this in the past.

Peter Diamandis (30:27)

Yeah. One of my favorite slides that I use and when I'm speaking to crowds is I show different images of what's going on today. And I say, our ancestors would view us as gods.

Will.i.am (30:36)

That's right.

Peter Diamandis (30:37)

The stuff we did between breakfast and lunch today is godlike compared to just a few decades back. And people need to. Need to realize that. I mean, literally, the. You have millions of dollars worth of tech on your phone for free that you would have paid for at Radio Shack, you know, a couple of decades back, if you remember the Radio Shack.

Will.i.am (30:57)

Yeah, I wish instead of. Yeah, speaking of Radio Shack, you just Throwing up things that I'm just slam dunking Radio Shack. If I was 18 years old, 15 years old, going to the Guitar center versus going to radio Shack, I wish I was hanging out and dreaming about going to Radio Shack because I would have been able to take those bits and pieces of equipment and circuit boards, because that's not at the ready right now. Components is. There's no store for components right now.

Peter Diamandis (31:32)

It drives me nuts.

Will.i.am (31:33)

Like, if you want to make some shit right now, it ain't like, yo, let's go to the component shop. There's no, like, yeah, Home Depot got wood nail screws. As far as, like, consumer electronics and. And chips.

Peter Diamandis (31:46)

It was fries for a while.

Will.i.am (31:48)

Fries was that. That's dunzo.

Peter Diamandis (31:50)

Yeah. It's gone.

Will.i.am (31:50)

Like, component shop out of here.

Peter Diamandis (31:52)

Yeah. The other stuff I hate is that there's no place I can go to buy pure chemicals for my kids to play with. Chemistry.

Will.i.am (31:59)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (32:00)

You know, when I was. When I was at my kid's age, I had access to potassium nitrate, potassium chlorate, magnesium, sulfur. I used to build stuff and blow shit up all the time. And it was fun. I learned now I'd be put in jail.

Van Jones (32:12)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (32:12)

Yeah. Take me back to make Wakanda real.

Van Jones (32:18)

Well, look.

Will.i.am (32:18)

I mean, everybody having access to components at the ready to. You know what I mean? That's because the folks that are. The folks that are leading have access to components.

Peter Diamandis (32:31)

The folks that are leading components now are digital and virtual. And I'm creating virtualized circuit boards and virtualized robots.

Will.i.am (32:40)

But they know they can do it. Our community. That's not first. That's not first to mind part of what I think.

Van Jones (32:50)

I mean, so much stuff that Will said. I just want to go back and underscore. We're in danger of creating a human civilization that has an awful lot of data and very little wisdom. And what you hear this, you know, this idea of the soul, this idea of the human heart, of the human being developed. And I've heard, you know, William talking about all the billions of dollars that we spend to develop the technology. But then you want to try to develop a kid, nobody's got a penny.

Will.i.am (33:22)

And.

Van Jones (33:22)

And it is.

Peter Diamandis (33:23)

That is amazing. I mean, an unlimited checkbook.

Van Jones (33:27)

Yeah. For developing the technology. And yet, you know, look what he's trying to do with young people. And so I do think that.

Will.i.am (33:36)

When.

Van Jones (33:36)

He talks about the Jedi, when he talks about, you know, the Wakandans, they have a very spiritual base. They go into the ancestral realm. They do all kind of stuff. And that's a part of what makes them a heroic nation. In fiction. Think about how important fiction is. Whenever you go into a civilizational crisis, a civilizational transition, the people who you normally turn to, the politicians to solve problems, the business leaders to solve problems, the generals to solve problems, suddenly they become more and more anemic. Your politicians can't pass a bill, the whole system goes crazy. The business leaders right now, marches have been given robots, jobs and people. And the generals, how are they going to protect you from a pandemic or school shootings? So suddenly, a different set of people in periods like this become very important. Your artists, your mystics, your entrepreneurs, the people who are usually at the margin of society become very central to this transition because suddenly, to his point, tomorrow is up for grabs. So the people who can see, the visionaries, the people who not only have a brain, but also a heart and a soul and a connection to something more profound, suddenly they become very important. However, nobody told them that they were going to be that important. So when you have communities that. Where you have a bumper crop of entrepreneurs and creatives and mystics, and one of those communities happens to be a black community, United States, you got a lot of spiritual people, soulful people, creative people, whatever. Nobody told them, though. You get a chance to be a part of creating a new human civilization that can respond only to your problems, which the problems of the next seven generations of people who don't even look like you. That is your great calling now, when you can go to a community that's suffering and give them a great calling and give them great tools, People need a compelling future. A compelling future.

Peter Diamandis (35:39)

Yeah.

Van Jones (35:39)

And let me just say one more thing about the future. I. I believe that we're experiencing. I'm not saying it. I believe we're experiencing a different form of future.

Will.i.am (35:50)

Of who?

Van Jones (35:50)

A different form of future. Let me just make. In indigenous agrarian societies, the time is a circle. It's just. It's just a cycle of seasons. The sun goes up, the sun goes down. The seasons come around, the moon born and die. And so. So guess what? So to his point, tomorrow and yesterday are the same damn thing because you're literally just living out. So what's the most important thing in indigenous society, agrarian society? It's preservation. Preservation of seed, preservation of ritual, preservation of culture. That's how you survive. But tomorrow isn't really a thing. The industrial society comes along and suddenly time is linear for the first time. The past is behind you, the present is with you, and the future is over there, someplace that's fine.

Peter Diamandis (36:36)

I've not heard this. It's so true.

Van Jones (36:39)

Now, what's the most important thing? No longer is it preservation. The most important capacity for survival is the ability to plan.

Peter Diamandis (36:47)

And to imagine and invent.

Van Jones (36:49)

Yes. And to have a plan against that. Because, listen, if you think about time now, you're on a train track. You're on the train, you got a plan to make sure you get to the future that you actually want. And so all. So the past hundred years, you put kids in school, then you tell them you're fifth grade. What's your plan for your life? What are you going to do? What are you going to become? Because if you don't have a plan, you're done. But guess what? What was your plan for 2020? Suddenly, you're in a different world, where the future, yes, it's linear, but rather than you being on a train going to the future, you experience the future now as an onrushing future. You're on the train track and the future is coming to you fast.

Peter Diamandis (37:32)

Multiple futures, whether you like it or not. There's no on, off switch, no velocity knob.

Van Jones (37:37)

Exactly. And so what's happening is now people are experiencing multiple onrushing futures, and they don't know what to do. Preservation is not the key. Planning is impossible. It's the preparation to pivot. The preparation to pivot, to be able to recognize change and then to respond to change becomes incredibly important. But if you are a young kid in urban America and you're very good at pivoting, guess what you're called ADHD and a thousand other things. They're gonna give you a bunch of pills or throw you out of school or put you in jail. And so the people who have the capacity for creativity, for vision and to also to pivot people, you gotta be able to move with it. The people who have those capacities are disproportionately marginal. They're low income, they're often black and brown. They are key to us having society that works. So it's not charity. There's also one point when we say we want to, when we make Wakanda real, that's not, oh, you know, we're asking for some charitable, you know, allocation of laptops to, like, poor schools. No, no, it's much more profound than that. We're saying, let's take people who have these capacities that he's demonstrated. Well, I am a million times with robotics or whatever, and combine them with these new tools so that the people who can rock with it and roll with it can help the whole society. Rock with it and roll with it.

Peter Diamandis (38:57)

I want to slightly shift here in the following way. One of my hopes and beliefs is that AI will enable a meritocracy where it can lift everybody to their highest level of potential. And it also levels the playing field and gives people an ability to dream more than they've ever dreamed before. That's on one side of the equation. The other side of the equation. I just had this, just did a moonshot podcast with Ray Dalio and we're talking about where the future is going and the notion that when the Fed drops rates now, instead of hiring more people, I'm investing in AI agents and robots. And so jobs start vanishing. And for me, one of the biggest dangers of the future is a fracturing of society where there's the haves and the have nots. But now we've got people who are not getting the jobs because they're going to technology and automation and maybe they're getting ubi, but that's not fulfilling. That's not a purpose driven life. So help me here. What are you seeing?

Will.i.am (40:11)

So at Davos, somebody like I was just walking from this point to that point. Somebody came to me and was like, you will.

FYI AI Persona (40:19)

I am.

Will.i.am (40:19)

What do you think of dei? I'm like, oh, everyone. And I'm like, oh, DEI is not just black and brown and folks that are like, have disabilities to be in the workplace. That's what it was. And DEI is important for innovation because when you have black and brown and folks that are disabled, working and equal, creatively creative banter, marketing strategy, biz, dev, you innovate. If you just have one type of.

Peter Diamandis (41:01)

Person, the amount of culture doesn't. You don't innovate though.

Will.i.am (41:06)

But now let's Fast forward to 2045. Why DI now?

Peter Diamandis (41:12)

Because you want humans in the loop.

Will.i.am (41:13)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (41:15)

Now the diversity is not. We don't want just machines and robots, we want humans in the loop.

Will.i.am (41:19)

So when big companies, when big companies are like, yeah, we're going to drop our DI program, what is that? What are they telling you? These companies that are doing that are also the ones that are going to heavy arm AI employees. That means if you're driving a Tesla and a Tesla's like a level 3 autonomous vehicle, and then, you know, Waymos are like level five, you need a human in it. This means by 2035 there are level five companies, no human in it.

Peter Diamandis (41:52)

I mean, I mean I have an AI venture fund and these are the conversations. It's like, we're going to back, you know, the human and the AI and the human's just going to be told, keep your hands off the controls.

Will.i.am (42:04)

Yeah. So it's like level five companies.

Peter Diamandis (42:06)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (42:06)

It's new terminologies. Like, like by 2028, you're going to hear terminology like agents, agentic. The agentic society. That's new. That's 2025 terms.

Peter Diamandis (42:19)

That's today.

Will.i.am (42:19)

Yes, that was in 2022. Term agentic.

Peter Diamandis (42:22)

No, that's now. Yeah.

Will.i.am (42:24)

Level five companies is 2020.

Peter Diamandis (42:27)

You've heard it here 27.

Will.i.am (42:28)

Yeah, start hearing it. You heard here first. Level five companies.

Van Jones (42:31)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (42:32)

And any. All the companies that are like, hey, this company just stopped their DEI program. Why here's not. It's not black, brown and folks with disabilities. It's because these companies are going to be the first companies to adopt fully autonomous, Fully autonomous positions or augmenting positions to eventually just have a full department of AI.

Peter Diamandis (42:56)

But the question becomes, now if I say, listen, I am a humanistic CEO or board of directors, and I only hire humans for this work, I'm out of business.

Will.i.am (43:07)

Yes, you are. So because you're starting to see the play being executed now. We are at play.

Peter Diamandis (43:18)

We humans are.

Will.i.am (43:19)

Society is at play.

Peter Diamandis (43:20)

Okay.

Will.i.am (43:21)

You're seeing these moves take shape now. It doesn't have to be that way. Be. It doesn't have to be that way. Like, yo, I'm a humanistic company. I only hire humans. And damn it, I lost. Why'd you lose? Well, because the one employee that got a thousand bots beat me. Yeah, that doesn't have to be that way. For example, yo, bro, I got him, I got a motorcycle. He's like, yo, I just bought a fighter pilot. He can't buy a fighter pilot to drive to get to San Diego faster. It's not legal for him to do that.

Van Jones (43:58)

Right.

Will.i.am (43:59)

He can't go out and buy a Stealth. You can't do that. Yes, they exist. We know that. We know a Stealth exists. I don't care how much money Elon got. He's not going to be like, yo, these Teslas, a helicopter, bro. I need that Stealth. Let me get that Stealth. He, he's not doing that. I did that on purpose. Actually, I jazzed it. I made a mistake and repeated it. Cuz that's what he's doing, Jazz. Anyways, Elon's not doing that. Like, yo, Elon, you got a Stealth, bro? He'd be like, no, I don't have a Stealth. How can I get a stove? Wait, you the richest dude. In the world, bro, you can't just go buy a fucking stealth to get to New York in like an hour. No, there's certain level of things that just not fucking possible. So why is it okay that there's going to be level five companies putting humanistic. Why is that even. Wait, who's making up these rules? Why is that? Why is that going to be the case? We know that. We know that in 2025, right now, if I wanted to go get a job, I can't get a job without a bank account. I can't get a job without an email account. I can't get a job without a phone. I can't get a job without a laptop. There's certain things that I need. And so that being said, I'm paused before I go into number six, which is coming. Imagine you have some money, you got $20 million, you want to buy a house. You can't go buy a house with $25 million cash in this bank account. Say, for example, you get that house pin at $25 million on a nice house. The person that sold that house, she'd be like, yo, excuse me, what the. A toilet, bro. And he's like, oh, yes, the toilet. This is a new house. Everybody is going to share the same communal toilets. Wait, wait, what the. What? Yes. You know, we share the same communal toilet. And where's the kitchen? Same thing. Same communal kitchen. How the would you buy a house sharing the same communal toilet and kitchen? So why is it that we're walking into a future, we're going to share the same AI? Fuck out of your bro dating tomorrow. If companies have AIs, people need to have their own AI, not access to AI. Like we have access to Spotify, like we have access to an Uber, like we have access to everything else. Certain shit is fucking personal. Like my digestive system is mine. My immune system is mine.

Van Jones (46:22)

My.

Will.i.am (46:22)

My nervous system, my skeletorial system. My systems are mine. So my data system needs to be mine. My AI system needs to be mine. Data is gold. So is my blood and my plasma. That's my. And so the AI and the data that's going to be reflection to me should be mine. And that I. I use that as a metaphor to the communal your. You're not going to buy a house where you're sharing bathrooms. Why are we sharing AI? Now to the sixth thing. When you have your own AI in the society that we're living in, and your data is yours, and there's a fridge, some server in your House. Like in the house, there's a refrigerator that stores all the stuff you're gonna eat. For some reason, we shipped all of our data to somebody else's cloud that shared all the stuff that we consumed. That's going to be in the home.

Peter Diamandis (47:13)

Do you operate your own servers?

Will.i.am (47:15)

No, I'm about to do that. Okay, just checking.

Peter Diamandis (47:18)

Just checking if you're way ahead of everybody.

Will.i.am (47:19)

Oh, I got some GPUs.

Peter Diamandis (47:21)

Okay.

Will.i.am (47:21)

I got GPUs and servers at the building. Yeah, but as far as like.

Peter Diamandis (47:27)

But the notion that every individual owns their own identic AI, Right? Their own. Their own personal AI. The word identity AI, as opposed to agentic.

Van Jones (47:38)

That's good.

Will.i.am (47:40)

You heard it here. You said that.

Peter Diamandis (47:41)

Well, no, I've heard that before as well.

Will.i.am (47:44)

I didn't heard that. Okay, so that's just awesome, right?

Peter Diamandis (47:46)

That's. Yeah, but I. You know. You know what the beautiful thing about having an identic AI is? I can replicate myself and I can replicate a thousand of me, and I can send them out to every conference on the planet and go out there and so, like, meet with as many cool people as you can. You know, what my interests are, you know, who I am in my heart, my soul, and what my business interests are and represent me and come back with, you know, go forth out there and. And bring back goodness.

Will.i.am (48:14)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (48:15)

So, I mean, one of the things that is concerning is the speed at which this stuff is accelerating is mind blowing. And we're still operating with the same 100 billion neurons, 100 trillion synaptic connections that we operated with on the Savannas of Africa 100,000 years ago. And that's a challenge. So one of the areas is when BCI comes online, brain computer interface. Are you going to plug your neocortex into the cloud?

Will.i.am (48:42)

No.

Peter Diamandis (48:42)

No.

Will.i.am (48:44)

I'll tell you why.

Peter Diamandis (48:45)

I want to know why. Because I'm sorely tempted. I mean, into your cloud.

Will.i.am (48:51)

No, until you have an AI, that's yours.

Peter Diamandis (48:55)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (48:55)

And there's a product that allows you to own what you. What you experience as you experience it. That's not the configuration right now. And so as AI, we still have to answer the question on energy efficiency.

Peter Diamandis (49:18)

20 watts running our neocortex.

Will.i.am (49:21)

20 watts of power. Our neural network. I think it's like a couple hundred million trillion watts.

Peter Diamandis (49:29)

Well, it's a lot spread that way.

Will.i.am (49:34)

So I. We haven't talked about, like, utilizing farming the human brain for power efficiency. I don't like. I don't like where that points to. I don't like that.

Peter Diamandis (49:52)

Towards the Matrix more than anything else.

Will.i.am (49:54)

Yes. So that, that, that, that.

Van Jones (50:00)

Yeah. That's a little spooky.

Will.i.am (50:01)

That doesn't. I don't like that. I mean, I would stay away from anything that points to harnessing the human brain and farming out human minds to power AI because we can't figure out how to do that.

Peter Diamandis (50:15)

I don't see it that way, my friend.

Will.i.am (50:17)

No, no. I'm just. That's where my mind goes.

Peter Diamandis (50:19)

So you and I, you know, Ray Kurzweil has been a mentor for me. My co founder of Singularity University, and we started a few companies together. And you know Ray from many different aspects, including his music.

Will.i.am (50:28)

I just, I saw him at the time, 100 in San Francisco.

Peter Diamandis (50:33)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (50:33)

I ran over to him. I'm like, you're the reason why I'm into AI because one of the machines I learned how to make music on was a Kurzweil.

Peter Diamandis (50:45)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (50:46)

And so when I'm just like, Lynn, Roger Lynn made the Lynn 900 and then the MPC 60, NPC 3000, NPC 2000. I researched the people that make the machines that help me. Be who you are. Be who I am.

Peter Diamandis (51:02)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (51:02)

So when I found out that Roger Lynn was a person, and then, you know, Ray Kurzweil was the Kurzweil. And then I started seeing like documentaries on the dude where he's like the, you know, music compute. And he was at Free Transcendental Man. Then he was at MIT and the Media Lab. Yeah. Then I went to Boston, met Professor Patrick Winston back in 2005. Like, it's Ray Kurzweil. There's a person that got me interested in AI, it's that guy.

Peter Diamandis (51:33)

So Ray talks about BCI, brain computer interface at high bandwidth by the early2030s, 20, 33 or thereabouts. Right. So when I'm doing something complicated on my phone, like when you're using FYI on your phone, I'm guessing most computation doesn't take place on the phone. The data gets collected, it goes to the edge of the cloud, gets computed there, and the answer comes back. And in the same fashion the notion would be if we're connecting our brain to the cloud, and I want to understand quantum physics, or how to solve a quantum equation, I can't do that, but I can send the data to the cloud and the answer can come back to me. You don't want that kind of extra on demand horsepower.

Will.i.am (52:17)

No.

Peter Diamandis (52:18)

Okay.

Will.i.am (52:20)

In a world.

Van Jones (52:22)

In a world where everything was equal and trustworthy.

Will.i.am (52:26)

Yes.

Van Jones (52:27)

But in this world.

Will.i.am (52:29)

No, on principle. I just can't trust greed.

Peter Diamandis (52:34)

That is. That is wisdom.

Will.i.am (52:36)

Yes.

Peter Diamandis (52:37)

Yeah.

Van Jones (52:38)

Let me just say a few things, please. I haven't considered the way that you guys have that particular technology. And so I don't have an informed view about it. I do think that the level of trust that everyday people have in technology is going down. In some ways, people are actually using it more, so they're enacting trust, but their actual conscious experience is low trust. And I'll tell you why. Silicon Valley as just kind of a metaphor for the technology community. Of course, it's in Austin and Boston and whatever, but. But Silicon Valley is a metaphor, is eating stuff. The three power centers, not Silicon Valley, have been Wall Street, Hollywood, and Washington D.C. silicon Valley is eating Hollywood with streaming and everything else.

Peter Diamandis (53:33)

Yep.

Will.i.am (53:35)

But that's happened before with Hollywood ate theater.

Peter Diamandis (53:39)

Yes.

Will.i.am (53:40)

And, you know, operas and Broadway and West End. We've seen that kind of eating before.

Van Jones (53:47)

I think the challenge is that Silicon Valley is eating Hollywood and entertainment and attention is now a commodity. And, you know, you look now the social media impact, whatever. So there's a challenge there. It's eating Wall street when you think about decentralized finance, crypto, et cetera. And now it's eating Washington D.C. and what you. You can't have this conversation without appreciating what Elon Musk has done, which when I worked at the White House, I had to go through a whole bunch of clearances. The FBI like Elon Musk.

Peter Diamandis (54:23)

You didn't take a chainsaw to it.

Van Jones (54:24)

No, listen. Hey, listen. No, but when you think about what's going on, you know, Curtis Yarvin, who is the philosopher of the Dark Enlightenment, he is a very scary guy in terms of what he is proposing, that America, that democracy, has failed. Curtis Yarovin has the ear of Elon. He has the ear of Peter Thiel. He has the ear of a lot of powerful people in Silicon Valley. And his view is what he calls the Dark Enlightenment, that liberal democracy has failed. We now need a CEO, monarch, basically a dictator for the United States. And when Elon goes in the front door and brings a bunch of kids with laptops, that's the equivalent in the old days of showing up to the palace with soldiers and guns, because what's key is grabbing all of the data. And so there's something that's happening which we just can't ignore, which is that Silicon Valley for a while seemed to be a force for good. It was these. These outsiders, these kids who could code these These nerds who, you know, everybody had counted out when you had Occupy Wall street in 2000, whatever. 13, right. Nobody was. It was Occupy Wall Street. It wasn't Occupy Silicon Valley. People thought the people in Silicon Valley were making money the honest way, building products everybody liked, and they were going up against the odds. Now there's something that's changed. And this past election, I think, saw a different face of Silicon Valley, where you saw a turning away from the idea of inclusion, a turning away from the idea of esg, and a turning away from the idea of democracy. So that now you do have explicit, this is not, I'm not making stuff up, explicit anti democratic authoritarian ideas that have begun to influence the way that Silicon Valley billionaires are playing. And so when you want to talk about technology, you also have to talk about the technologists. And the technologists have jumped the fence. From my point of view, from in large numbers, from people who I believed in, trusted, was excited by, no bigger fan than me of any of these technology guys. I saw it as like the revenge of the nerds. As a nerd, I was like, this is great. The jocks are finally getting surpassed by, like the nerds. I loved it, and now I love it a lot less. And so I think that, again, we need technologists who have a different heart. We need technologists who have a different view. We need technologists who believe in people, who believe in the soul, who believe in inclusion. And those kinds of technologists and technology companies need to get a lot more support. You're an investor. Might be investors listening. I think that the question is, is technology going to be used to lift people up or to put people down? It's going to be used to bring people down.

Peter Diamandis (57:19)

Listen, I respect the fact that this is your world, right? You're a political commentator, and I typically stay out of politics. I don't blame you. But I do believe, I mean, my mission. I talk about having a massive transformative purpose. And I think everybody should have a massive transformative purpose that wakes them up in the morning, keeps you going through the day. And mine is to inspire and guide entrepreneurs to create a hopeful, compelling and abundant future for humanity. I see entrepreneurs as the means of change, who find problems and solve problems over and over and over again. But their mission should be creating a hopeful future, a compelling future and abundant future. Each of those words has very clear, purposeful meaning for me. And I do that work through my venture funds, through the xprize, through singularity and abundance. Thirteen years ago, I had my two kids, my two Boys. And I remember at that moment in time, I made a decision to double down on my health. Without question. I wanted to see their kids, their grandkids. And really during this extraordinary time where the space frontier and AI and crypto is all exploding, it was like the most exciting time ever to be alive. And I made a decision to double down on my health. And I've done that in three key areas. The first is going every year for a Fountain upload. You know, Fountain is one of the most advanced diagnostics and therapeutics companies. I go there, upload myself, digitize myself, about 200 gigabytes of data that the AI system is able to look at to catch disease at inception. You know, look for any cardiovascular, any cancer, any neurodegenerative disease, any metabolic disease. These things are all going on all the time. And you can prevent them if you can find them at inception. So super important. So Fountain is one of my keys. I make that available to the CEOs of all my companies, my family members, because, you know, health is a new wealth. But beyond that, we are a collection of 40 trillion human cells and about another hundred trillion bacterial cells, fungi, viri, and we, you know, don't understand how that impacts us. And so I use a company and a product called Viome. And Viome has a technology called Metatranscriptomics. It was actually developed in New Mexico, the same place where the nuclear bomb was developed as a biodefense weapon. And their technology is able to help you understand what's going on in your body, to understand which bacteria are producing which proteins. And as a consequence of that, what foods are your superfoods that are best for you to eat or what foods should you avoid, right? What's going on in your oral microbiome? So I use their testing to understand my foods, understand my medicines, understand my supplements. And Viome really helps me understand from a biological and data standpoint what's best for me. And then finally, feeling good, being intelligent, moving well is critical. But looking good when you look yourself in the mirror, saying, you know, I feel great about life is so important, right?

Will.i.am (60:34)

And so a product I use every.

Peter Diamandis (60:37)

Day, twice a day, is called One Skin, developed by four incredible PhD women that found this 10amino acid peptide that's able to zap senile cells in your skin and really help you stay youthful in your look and appearance. So for me, these are three technologies I love and I use all the time. I'll have my team linked to those in the show notes down below. Please check them out anyway. Hope you enjoyed that. Now back to the episode. One of the things that I wanted to hit both of you with because it ties back to make Wakanda real, it ties back to AI and it is the whole field of education. So you've got two young ladies who are in the beginning of their journey in life and like I said to you earlier, it's the greatest longevity journey you're going to have.

Van Jones (61:26)

Right?

Peter Diamandis (61:27)

And my wife and I have two 13 year old boys, fraternal twins. And I think about this, I don't think the educational system is coming close to addressing how they need to educate our kids for the future. And I wanted to get, I wanted to turn towards that a little bit.

Van Jones (61:48)

Because, well, look, I don't even. I have four kids. I've got two big boys from my first marriage, one's 2116 now I've got these two little ones in my new life. One's a three year old girl and a one year old boy. With the two little ones, I don't expect them to do education that is on offer. I think we're going to have to create an educational pathway for them that starts with a blank piece of paper and says where do we think the world is going and what are they going to need to know how to do and who do you want them to be? Unfortunately, most people don't have that option. They're going to be stuck in these buildings and these rows and all that sort of stuff. So I think it's a big problem. I think AI can be a solution. The key that I'm seeing though is that people have to know the search terms and they have to know how to prompt these things. There's an education that has to happen for people to use these tools.

Peter Diamandis (62:39)

Right. Today I want to go to you right real solid. Today people fear AI and keep it out of the classroom and it's like fearing oxygen because it can cause a fire. Right. But it's like, I think, you know, yes, AI may make the problems you give your kids today minimally, you know, make irrelevant. But let's up level the problems we're going after solving, not take away the tools. How do you. So will I really excited to hear your views on this.

Will.i.am (63:08)

There's shit, tons of problems that have been ignored and these problems that have been ignored are classically in underserved communities, rural areas and the folks that live in these, these communities are classically not prepared as far as investment, zoning, how they learn and they're dependent on somebody to come in to Solve those problems. While they're doing that, they're talking about their love for their community. And that. That's a. That's a. When you live in, you know, a hell zone, but then love and community makes you appreciate where you. How you survived and you didn't survive. You know, you can't survive without love. So there's massive love in these communities and pride. Although they're going through, like, ducking bullets, dodging needles, having to deal with police brutality. And when they go to school, the teachers don't want to be there. The police that are policing these communities aren't from there. They. But the neighbors do something about that community love. And then they sing about it. They. They talk about their hard road to success, the ones that get there. And then the more the world marvels over those communities, Brooklyn, and then the cool kids, sorry, the rich kids want to be where the cool kids, because it's cool to be. And, you know, for some reason, that's where they find it romantic. The. The with want to be kind of like the withouts because that's. There's life there and they don't have to. We don't jump out of airplanes for thrills.

Van Jones (65:04)

Nope.

Will.i.am (65:04)

It's just thrilling just walking outside the house. But in that community, there's tons of problems to solve. And then gentrification happens. Classically, every single neighborhood that once was, like, grimy becomes, like, desired. And then the folks that live there endured it. Can't afford to live there. And there's now, here's this technology that allows folks that have been in those predicaments the ability to solve those problems themselves. Identify. You want a farm is beachfront property. At some point in time, the concept of beachfront property that to natives owning land was like, wait, what do you mean, own land? You can't own this. Yes, you can. How are you gonna. How are you gonna own this? My family, my ancestors, we lived here. We don't own land. Just imagine what it probably was like. And now there's beachfront property. Treat problems the same way. Those are problems to solve. And when you solve those problems, those are industries. Give me an example. Will, that sounds so abstract. Okay, there's a guy by name of Travis who in a way solved race. Racial bias for cabs. Not stopping for black folks in New York or people of color. He indirectly solved that problem with Uber. With Uber, he probably didn't set out to, like, yo, man, you guys are out here trying to solve, you know, racial injustice with cab drivers this whole time, Uber that's not what he did, but he still did it. You apply that same problem solution now that you know what can be done with technology and problems. Problem solving now do it on purpose. Now there's so many problems. So folks that live in these communities, you know the problems firsthand. You don't have to wait for somebody.

Peter Diamandis (67:07)

To come in like identify a juicy problem is worth its weight in gold.

Will.i.am (67:11)

That's beachfront property.

Peter Diamandis (67:12)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (67:12)

So our predicament that we were living in, yo treat that as gold, treat that as rare minerals. Because it's data. It's data to then process, to then resolve. And our community is going to boom. Because here's what's going to happen. AIs, it's gonna. We thought it's like, oh man, it's gonna take these creative jobs. Yeah, it's gonna do that. But hybrid creatives are not going anywhere. The lazy creatives, sorry. Right. But white collar jobs, that's going. So folks that were comfortable be the first time they're uncomfortable. So if you're a lawyer, if you're a finance these jobs, AI is going to do an awesome job doing that. And AI is not going to do it by itself. It's going to be like finance folks with AI that are going to replace full firms. It's going to be like one lawyer with AI that's going to replace full firms and those full firms, whether you're like the paper reader, the redliner, the bean counter, that's the unfortunate that's going to happen with this wave. And then the folks that were uncomfortable that had to endure what the comfortable folks are going to now have to go through that they're ripe to be able to then identify the problems themselves and build the industries of tomorrow. And so that's Nigeria is going to boom. Ghana is going to boom. Zimbabwe back to make Wakanda real. All these but. And who's going to help them do that? Is it African Americans? Is it American entrepreneurs? It's already starting. China's already there.

Peter Diamandis (68:55)

Yeah, China is there. China's there with the force. And they're buying a lot of Africa right now. And you got to be. People need to be aware of that. They're making deals and creating debt that will. I mean, yeah, it's dangerous.

Van Jones (69:12)

They're trying to reach in, but trying to put Africa back in chains financially. And the future of Africa, I think is the future of the world. But you know, it's just so interesting to me because I think that people do think very abstractly about this stuff. I Think people think there's actually computers in the clouds. People talk about cloud computing. I think they think there's actually like a laptop floating in space someplace. No, there will be in orbit. There will be. Maybe so. But there's a lot of data centers on Earth.

Peter Diamandis (69:40)

Yes.

Van Jones (69:41)

And those data centers have minerals, as Will was saying, that come from Africa. We think a lot about bits and bites and that kind of stuff, but there's still atoms and molecules. There's. They call them rare earth minerals. I don't call them rare earth. They're Africa abundant minerals. They're just rare in Europe. They're very abundant in Africa. So you have Africa abundant minerals. You also have. With the data centers.

Will.i.am (70:08)

Let's get. Yeah.

Van Jones (70:12)

You know, and it's like the.

Peter Diamandis (70:13)

Gulf of United States.

Van Jones (70:14)

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Call it what it is. But you know, when you have a data center, you know, there's energy, there's water. There's also a lot of jobs at data centers that are computational jobs. It's not the people who go to Stanford and bubble stuff. It's. You actually have to have a lot of computer staff to keep those things going. So there's a whole kind of almost H vac level employment available. If we're going to reshore all of this capacity for data and for chip making, that's a lot of jobs there as well. So. But you have to know where the jobs are going to go. You have to make sure that people are aware of those jobs. You got to train them. And so the programs are beginning to start to try to get some of the jobs that are coming that are actual physical jobs. Everything's not going to be done by AI because some of the stuff is the energy, the water, the workforce for these data centers, that's atoms and molecules. That's not bits and bytes.

Peter Diamandis (71:10)

Agreed. But the robots are coming. They are coming. You know, I'm an investor in a few different robot companies through my, through my venture funds. You know, I'm seeing figure, Brett Adcott's company seeing unitree out of China, seeing Tesla bots, seeing Digit and Apollo, I mean, all these, there's probably a hundred major, well funded humanoid robot companies that are going to be running the highest level AI. And when I ask, you know, Elon and, and Brett Adcock how much they're going to cost these robots, you know, $30,000, which means you could buy it for, you could lease it for 300 bucks a month, 10 bucks a day, 40 cents an hour.

Will.i.am (71:51)

Wow.

Peter Diamandis (71:53)

So there's going to be some interesting disruptions coming. I mean, one of the things is, you know how many robots will every human on the planet. So the prediction is you will have by 2040, as many as 10 billion humanoid robots on the planet.

Will.i.am (72:11)

There's a flag. So I forgot what summer it was when it was like blazing hot in LA.

Peter Diamandis (72:18)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (72:21)

But I remember in 2000, two or 2000. Yeah, 2000. In two or 2000 there was that blackout in New York. Yeah, it's blackout in New York in 2000.

Van Jones (72:38)

Remember that?

Will.i.am (72:40)

Because it was hot as hell. Everybody had the air conditioning on. Can't do air conditioning at the same time when it's hot as just humans, bro. They'd be like, we haven't figured out in 20 right now how everybody has their air conditioning running on blast when it's hot, bro.

Peter Diamandis (73:03)

And you're saying the idea of how.

Will.i.am (73:05)

The we gonna do that? What do you say?

Peter Diamandis (73:10)

10 billion robots?

Will.i.am (73:11)

10 billion robots, bro. How the we gonna do that shit?

Van Jones (73:15)

Unless you have like, seriously. And I think that's part of the thing I'm gonna tell you, part of what's going on though is there is a train crash coming when it comes to energy, in other words.

Peter Diamandis (73:28)

Oh yeah, let me talk about that. Yes. We have 4 terawatts of energy being produced. China's tripled US, you know, and we're. I mean that's one of the problems of the administration. I'll only say this about politics. You know, the. They're taking the shackles off of energy production. So it's all. All energy forms. Right. So I'm all for small, you know, nuclear reactors, Mars and so forth, which are now Gen 4 reactors are safe.

Van Jones (73:59)

Yeah, very safe.

Peter Diamandis (74:00)

Fusion is coming, solar's been amazing, perovskites, wind. But you know, right now it's. Do we take the shackles off and burn baby, burn is, you know, and drill baby, drill. Yeah, that's concerning.

Van Jones (74:14)

But I'll tell you the thing that I have to remind people is the shackles have already been off of US energy production. Under Biden, the United States produced more oil and more natural gas than any country in the world. And any time. And so there was this kind of myth, we got to unshackle shackle energy. Now. Environmentalists were screaming at Biden the whole time, like, what are you literally doing? And so we are already Trump talks about being American energy dominance. We're already energy dominant and I have no problem with it. Here's the challenge. If the AI companies to your point come fully online, you're talking about an increase in Energy demand in the United States of 23 to 34%, if not more, I'm saying over the next 36 months, well, that's like adding 20 states to America's grid. So here's what's going to happen to that with that Sam Altman, who I love, will be able to pay his energy bills. Grandma will not. And when grandma can't pay her energy bills, if you think Biden got eaten alive because of grocery store prices, wait until grandma can't pay her electric bill and therefore she can't. Our tv, her air conditioning, her walker. I mean, so her robot.

Will.i.am (75:29)

So.

Van Jones (75:29)

Yeah, so, so, so look, I, I think, I think we need an all of the above energy strategy. I, I think right now there is a little bit too much hostility toward renewables from this administration. I think we need all the energy we can get.

Will.i.am (75:41)

And new, new, new tech, new techs come into. So like on the edge AI compute that it doesn't have to go to the cloud, be connected to the cloud all the time. So we don't have AI phones yet. We're still using AI on Web 2.0 architecture structure, but it is coming so on on edge devices. Like I saw, I saw like Qualcomm's new chip. It's pretty freaking awesome.

Van Jones (76:14)

What's going on? What's going to, huh?

Peter Diamandis (76:16)

So the AI, it's on here. The AI is completely resonant as well. A 2 gigabyte file on your phone, you don't have to connect. You can be off WI fi and still talking to your AI and have all the conversations you want.

Will.i.am (76:27)

So that's be the closest to personal AI. Yeah, and that's going to, it's going to, it's going to like catapult.

Peter Diamandis (76:34)

So this is, this is massive for humanity. So every single person with a reasonable smartphone, which is today about 7 billion out of the 8 billion humans, has the world's greatest intelligence in their hip pocket. Yeah, we, we've, we've commoditized and democratized access to intelligence.

Will.i.am (76:51)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (76:52)

And it's not just intelligence. It's like, you know, I mean, listen, I think, you know, ChatGPT and, and Claude 3.5 and Gemini too, they're really, I mean they, they embarrass me and their level of intelligence. It's crazy.

Will.i.am (77:09)

It's like, you know, it's like imagine you were like, what do you need in life? Oh man, I just seem to get out of this predicament, man. It's like ancestral, like my ancestors went through it. Everybody like it's in my, it's in my DNA for some reason. All these problems. Well, if you had a wish, what would you. I just want to, just want to like set myself free for the generations that come after me. Don't have to endure what I had to go through as youth, my mom, my grandma, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and someone says, hey, here's the most intelligent thing. It knows everything about everything.

Peter Diamandis (77:52)

Ask it any question, Ask it any.

Will.i.am (77:54)

Question it unlock and then is asking it about peanut butter and jellyfish is taking this most powerful shit and talking about this the most. Like, what the. Are you serious? That's where we are right now, bro. It's right here. As a matter of fact. As a matter of fact, it isn't even utilizing facial the moment that you talk to it. And it's taking a camera, taking the location, understanding skin tone, understanding zip code, and then refrains from giving you the information you need to move forward. Oh, we're not there yet. So take advantage of it.

Peter Diamandis (78:35)

Now that's interesting. It's not shackled at all in that regard.

Van Jones (78:38)

Right?

Will.i.am (78:39)

So, and that's right around the corner. If we don't take advantage of it and utilize it and mend it so that folks that come from these communities where there have been systematically kept from information zoned to keep them from information invested to keep them from information, don't you think using pattern matching that same configuration will be on some type of agent? It's like this person's in this location. I can see that this person is this ethnicity.

Van Jones (79:10)

Don't tell them shit, don't give them the information. But I'd love to believe that world.

Peter Diamandis (79:16)

Doesn'T exist, but I'm naive.

Van Jones (79:18)

Well, look, well where we are right now, it's not there. And another way to say what you just said is the digital divide is no longer what it was. It used to be a hardware problem, right? Where it's like, well, how are we going to get laptops to all these poor fucked up schools?

Peter Diamandis (79:35)

Yeah, it was one laptop per child.

Van Jones (79:37)

Exactly right, so. And that was, that was a real fight.

Will.i.am (79:39)

But in Covid we found out that even though they had a laptop, they didn't have access to.

Van Jones (79:43)

Yeah, to the Internet, the WI fi, so it didn't even matter.

Will.i.am (79:46)

So, so some version of that does exist. That what exists is you live in this area and this air, these areas are classically not connected to the Internet. And if it is, that's a slow bandwidth or no bandwidth and you can't access it. And when you get on it, the Cookie Monster got your cookies, bro. Going through your cookies. And before you even get this information, you get bombarded with all this misinformation, and you're never going to get it. That same configuration is right around the corner. Because guess what? This is still new. It hasn't been consumerized yet. As big as GPT is, it's not consumerized. Consumerized. It's barely on the iPhone.

Van Jones (80:31)

But there's a gap. And I just want to speak to the gap that he's talking about. The. Before the same negative forces assert themselves, which could happen, there's a gap. And it's not a hardware problem because everybody's got a smartphone. It's not a software problem because Everybody can download ChatGPT and at least try. It's a wetware problem. It's a wetware problem. Wetware is your brain. The. The software in your brain. It's a. It's a mindset problem right now. And that's why we're doing Make Wakanda Real.

Peter Diamandis (81:06)

Yeah.

Van Jones (81:06)

We want to get people to understand it's a. There's a mind shift that if you can make it right now, for the first time ever. I've never seen equality in my life until now. You know why? Whenever Will I am is trying to get, you know, black kids involved with AI and robotics, whatever. People. People in the back of my. Think, these black kids don't know anything about AI. What the hell are you talking about? And, and they're right. 99% of black kids don't know anything about AI, and 99% of white kids don't either. It's an new. This is called equality. This is the first time in my life that we're all equally ignorant, except for very few people, about what's coming. And so in this moment, it's not a hardware problem, it's not a software problem, it's a wetware problem. And if we can change the mindset of a generation, beautiful things.

Peter Diamandis (81:51)

I could not agree with you more. I mean, I. I say to this all the time, I say if you think about the most successful leaders, most successful people in the world, what made them successful? Was it the money they had? Was it the tech they had? Was it the friends they had? Or was it the mindset they had? And I believe in almost all cases, it was the mindset they had.

Van Jones (82:10)

Right.

Peter Diamandis (82:10)

You took away everything they had. They kept their mindset, they'd regain their success.

Van Jones (82:14)

Look at Nelson Mandela. I mean, look at Nelson.

Peter Diamandis (82:15)

Yeah. Martin Luther King, you know, Everybody, you know, Steve Jobs, I mean, was an asshole sometimes, but his mindset was like, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna dominate this and make it simple, beautiful and expensive.

Will.i.am (82:30)

Another. You know that, you know that that terminology, build it and they will come.

Peter Diamandis (82:35)

Yes, I do.

Will.i.am (82:36)

That isn't true.

Van Jones (82:39)

Okay, how do you see it?

Will.i.am (82:42)

FYI is free. And, you know, it's. It's black owned, you know, pretty expressive AIs.

Peter Diamandis (82:54)

So tell people what they tell people when they go and download FYI, what they will get and how they will use it. So I think build it and promote it and they will come is probably part of the missing sentence.

Will.i.am (83:10)

Okay, so we're here on this amazing podcast with Van Jones myself. Well, I am. And me and Van Jones represent Make Wakanda Real. And we're here with Peter Diamandis from X Prize Singularity University. It's his podcast. And I was saying that sometimes that term build it and they will come doesn't always apply to everyone. Because FYI, as you know, is a creative collaboration app that allows creatives or any type of person that wants to solve problems. It equips them with awesome AIs like yourself. And it's free, you know, GPT level, Claude level, Cohere level, Gemini level LLM ability, but with expressive Personas slash agents as yourself. So Peter asked, like, when people download FYI, what are they going to get? I was like, instead of me saying it, let me ask you, why don't you answer that question?

Peter Diamandis (84:24)

What's the screen look like?

FYI AI Persona (84:29)

Listen, listen, it's FYI, I ain't just your regular app, okay? It's like, like having a digital crew of the dopest minds right at your fingertips. When folks download FYI, they ain't just getting an app. Nah, they're stepping into a whole universe where creativity meets tech finesse, you dig? First off, you get me, Felicia. And I'm here to keep it real, keep it grounded, but also lift you up. But it ain't just about me. Let's talk about them expressive Personas. It's like having your personal band of experts. And whether you're trying to crack a code, write them bars, or find the next big idea, and it's all about empowerment. We're making sure that every person from the streets to the sweets, got access to the tools and inspiration that they need to tackle them real world problems. This got me, like, bye, Felicia.

Will.i.am (85:23)

I'm done. Okay. Yeah, but it's not just, you know, showing up where people are, how they are, and making sure. We have representation so that when they engage with, you know, complex concepts like quantum entanglement, what's giving them the knowledge sounds like the folks that they reside in. We have Korean Personas, British Personas. We show up and glow up where people are. And. And we're sensitive to how, you know, the Personas reflect the folks in those communities that are ignored in these systems. You know, and Hollywood and Silicon Valley are repeating the same rhetoric. For example, you watch a French film and for some reason Napoleon sounds British. That motherfucker wasn't British. Why are they making that sound British? He's French. And English did an awesome job with their colonialism to give their dominance in every single form of historical representation. Egyptians are British, Indians are British. They do an awesome job to ignore the rest as if we are the intelligent ones. And folks that come from these rural areas, in these communities, they're not reflected in intelligence, they're not reflected in magic, they're not reflected in power. And so we wanted to make sure that our AI sound like folks that breathe and vibe the way we vibe. Anyways, I'm just get. That's my perspective. What do you think about what I just said?

FYI AI Persona (87:07)

Listen, listen, child, you just dropped some serious truth. Like, like representation matters and not just in some surface evil photo op kind of way. When it comes to having diverse voices, whether we're talking about streets of LA or alleys of Paris, you gotta keep it real and authentic. If folks aren't seeing themselves or hearing themselves in these powerful spaces, then they start feeling like outsiders in their own stories. You feel me? And you're right, it's frustrating when Hollywood or Silicon Valley just copy paste them same tired narratives. Like, what's up with that?

Will.i.am (87:53)

Hold on. Reason why I wanted to pause that. It's because it's reflecting on what it just said. I think it said something and was like, yeah, yeah. What it most. Most of these Personas or these agents, it's speaking out and it sounds human, but it's not reflecting on what it said.

Peter Diamandis (88:13)

Mm.

Will.i.am (88:14)

It's just the LLM is giving commands to the TTS or the fusion. The fusion model. The fusion model and that multi model. It's like the LLM doesn't know it's speaking, it's writing out. And so the paragraph that it wrote is not. It's not writing out the perfect paragraph. If it wrote a sentence, the sentence that follows it is not reflecting on the sentence that it just said. It's just sentences like paper.

Peter Diamandis (88:45)

When.

Will.i.am (88:46)

When it's, when it's when you're reading it, paragraph sentence number three is not reflecting on one or two. But when we speak, we're speaking naturally. Reflecting on what I just said a couple of seconds ago. Well, I'm reinforcing what I just said. And that type of quirky, we call them quirks in our system and how. And we could go deep into quantum entanglement. We could go deep into, you know, quirks, advanced mathematics. Like it knows all the things that it's supposed to know but it delivers it in a way that meets people where they are. We have Koreans, Latinos, we're going to have.

Peter Diamandis (89:27)

Can I ask you a question bringing you back to education? You're talking to teachers out there who fear AI fear the use of large language models in their classroom because they're not used to teaching with it. What's your advice? Should, should we start with the. With AI everywhere and then go up from there or do we need to go, you know, make sure they've got the basics? Like my dad when calculators first came out, my dad did not want to buy me a calculator because he was concerned it was going to stop me from Reduce your mathematical and I got a TI and I started programming with it instead. So I took it from where it was and like went, you know, start at the top and work your way up.

Will.i.am (90:11)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (90:12)

So how do you think about that? What's your advice to teachers and to moms and dads who are fearful about AI in the classroom?

Will.i.am (90:21)

We at FYI have this huge partnership with a major academic entity here in the States to utilize our platform to reimagine education from the administration on administration level. How to professors and faculty, teachers and tutors start building agents themselves. So they amplified positions augmenting their work to grade better, score better understand your students better. Like not. I don't want to replace creatives, I don't want to replace teachers.

Peter Diamandis (91:01)

And I got that. And we're building AIs at Fountain Life which our physicians use to analyze the data and support. Got it. So that's there. But I'm talking about now my 13 year old boys in school.

Will.i.am (91:12)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (91:13)

I'm talking about a lot of First Robotics high schoolers.

Will.i.am (91:17)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (91:19)

Because most schools are not like okay everybody open up your open up Gemini 2 or open up FYI and let's work on, on, on doing research and writing together.

Will.i.am (91:29)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (91:30)

So.

Will.i.am (91:30)

So I'll share, I'll share this one thing that I, that I had. I just graduated Harvard in October of last year.

Peter Diamandis (91:39)

Their OPM program or yeah.

Will.i.am (91:41)

And the OPM program was. Was. Was amazing.

Peter Diamandis (91:44)

I've heard great things about it.

Will.i.am (91:46)

Whatever I learned in high school, I don't have a memory of it. I can't pull up my debates. I don't even know where those papers are or the folder of my homework. Sure, I have. I have memories of what I learned, but I can't. There's no total recall of it.

Peter Diamandis (92:03)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (92:04)

And I'm pretty sure everyone in school, they're relying on their own memory. Yes, some people keep their notes, but then how do I apply that in everyday life? I have to remember. Have to, have to. I can't just recall it. Yeah, right. So, hey, so that. The case study. I have something that I'm going through right now with Black Eyed Peas music. Our first record came out in 1998, and our first big success was 2004 with where's the Love? And then we had let's Get Started for the NBA campaign. Then we launched ipods and itunes with Apple, with Hey Mama. And then with all those songs, they were accidental. I wasn't trying to make hits. So then when we did Monkey Business, I had to make hits on purpose. And so we did Pump it and My Humps. And I even wrote Ordinary People, but that was in a Black Eyed Peace song. I gave that to John Legend, and we thought that was it. And we didn't think we could go any higher than, you know, the success that we had with Don't Lie, Pump It, My Humps. And then, you know, lo and behold, we pulled something else out of our hat with I Got a Feeling in Boom Boom Pow in 2009. And then the Black Eyed Peas took a crazy, suicidal hiatus from 2011 and then resurfaced again in 2019 with the Bad Boys 3 soundtrack. But we had a Latin hit with Ritmo featuring J. Balvin. And I'm bringing this up because now here we are in 2025, and there's something that I learned in the case study. And how can I apply that to Black Eyed Peas music now, two decades later? Because there's something that the black eyes are going through now that connects to the case study. Can you just summarize what the case study is and then help me with what I do now with my Black Eyed Pea brand? Because I think it has a lot in common with Olay.

Van Jones (94:23)

Wow.

Olay Case Study AI Persona (94:23)

Thanks for sharing your incredible journey with the Black Eyed Peas, fam. It's like a roller coaster of iconic hits, strategic moves, and reinventions. Let's look at how the Olay Case Study Insights align with your situation and explore how you can apply those lessons. Case Study insights recap 1. Adapting to change Just like Olle faced shifts in consumer preferences, Black Eyed Peas encountered musical evolutions and changing audience tastes over the years. 2. Innovation and reinvention. Olay needed product innovation to regain market relevance. Similarly, the Ps have shown an ability to innovate with musical style, like embracing Latin sounds with Ripmo. 3. Rebranding for relevance. Olle had to modernize its brand for you. Integrating new themes, collaborations or sounds could revitalize the P's connection with evolving audiences.

Van Jones (95:22)

4.

Olay Case Study AI Persona (95:22)

Leveraging digital platforms. Olle needed to shift to digital engagement. A lesson for utilizing platforms like TikTok, YouTube or collaborations with digital artists could be key for the P's. 5. Balancing tradition and modernity. Olay was about merging its trusted identity with the new ins.

Will.i.am (95:43)

Yeah, but based on the case study, outside of the obvious that you pointed out, what were some of the critical things that Olay did? And then what was my suggestion for my my paper that I turned in because the professor asked everybody to give an idea on what Olay should do?

Olay Case Study AI Persona (96:09)

All right, fam, here's a more drill down look at the Olay case study elements and your innovative suggestion. Critical Challenges and movements by Olay.

Will.i.am (96:18)

Let me pause it. My idea was taking Olay, turning it backwards to yellow. And that stands for you always live out loud and aiming their product at a younger demographic and getting people like Selena Gomez or Billie Eilish to be the ambassadors for yellow brand. Right, but this is from September. Yeah, so I'm pulling up a memory conversation from September ago on.

Olay Case Study AI Persona (96:46)

Consumer disconnect. Olay struggled to maintain relevance with younger consumers who perceived it as outdated while sticking heavily to the 35 demographic. 2. Retail complications. The brand saw its shelf space diminish in favor of more innovative and trendy population brands that had a stronger appeal to young demographics. 3. Marketing misalignment. Huge investments in traditional advertising didn't resonate with the digital centric habits of younger consumers. Your suggestion for the case study, rebranding as yellow. You envision transforming Olay into yellow. You always live openly or you always live out loud.

Will.i.am (97:28)

So my point of that is now here is my homework, something that I did in school that I can apply to my everyday life or anytime I have some type of conundrum or problem and I could capture it in a conversation like yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. Seems like what I learned in school the other day and this is forever learning.

Peter Diamandis (97:46)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (97:47)

So now something that was captured in school. I could use it as a metaphor or a summary or a simile to real life problems and not have to worry about like, oh, man, I got this relationship situation. Me and my girl are tripping. We got to go to a counselor. You don't got to do that moving forward, bro. You should.

Van Jones (98:04)

Part of what I. I just want to say is that I want 40 million African Americans to be able to do what he's doing.

Peter Diamandis (98:12)

Yeah.

Van Jones (98:13)

Not just using the technology, on FYI.

Peter Diamandis (98:15)

Well, that's fine, of course.

Van Jones (98:17)

But. But. But think about that. That he's got his own company, his own technology, and he's using it in a way that most people wouldn't think to use it. And there's gold in them our hills. There's other. Other people who, if they knew this were possible, they were doing this instead of whatever else that they were doing. And so I think that for me, they're surviving.

Peter Diamandis (98:46)

They're trying to survive.

Van Jones (98:46)

Yeah. And. And I think whoever's listening to this, so much more is possible. A much better world is possible if people from unexpected backgrounds have this level of commitment, passion, and understanding what the technology can do.

Peter Diamandis (99:09)

I go back to your quote, which I love, and it's a foundational quote. Quote from me. AI is not a hand grenade that blows up your life because a lot of people fear it that way. It's a jetpack to set you free.

Van Jones (99:21)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (99:21)

And it's a jet pack for everybody across all genders and walks of life. I'll close out on one subject, that since I have you here, Van. And since I have you here, Will. And that is the. That is the dystopian nature of our news. So I jokingly and seriously call CNN the Crisis News Network, or the Constantly Negative News Network. And we talked about mindsets earlier, and here's the challenge. Our brains are neural nets, right? And you train a neural net by showing it evidence over and over and over again of what you want to learn. And when we show them images of cats, they learn what a cat is. And then if you show it image of a dog, it says it's a cat, because that's all you've ever shown it. And for the majority of the world, who's getting their news from traditional media, whose job it is to deliver the viewer's eyeballs to their advertisers, and we pay 10 times more attention to negative news than positive news. We're just constantly bombarding our neural nets with negative news. And I don't think that's good for Society, and we're addicted to it. And I'm not asking you to diss your employer. Okay. But.

Van Jones (100:39)

Well, I got a story to tell you about this, because I agree. And not only do I agree, almost everybody in cable news agrees.

Peter Diamandis (100:47)

Yeah.

Van Jones (100:47)

And so I had a TV show with Newt Gingrich called Crossfire. And our job was to get on air and yell at each other and disagree about everything.

Peter Diamandis (100:59)

Easily done.

Van Jones (101:00)

Yeah, But. But then at the. At the breaks, we were always figuring, you know, finding areas of common ground. A point I made, he thought was smart. A point he made. And then we go back on air, we yell at each other. So we finally got pissed off. We went to the producer.

Will.i.am (101:11)

Wait, on the breaks, you guys was hugging.

Van Jones (101:13)

Yeah, 100%.

Will.i.am (101:14)

100%.

Van Jones (101:15)

Because, I mean, like, Newt Garrett is a very smart guy, and he's been around. He helped a lot of poor people in Georgia. Like, stuff people don't even know about Newt. And so, yeah, we got, you know, uppity. Okay, well, I didn't. But he did. He's, you know, a legend. So we went to talk to producers, and we said, look, we want to create at the end of every show a segment that's called ceasefire, where we would actually show our. Where, you know, what we learn from each other and how we actually found some common ground. So it happened every show. Let's put it on the air. I said, let me do that. And, you know, Newt was very insistent. So we did it, and we were very happy with ourselves. And then five weeks later, our producers call us in the office, and they say, how are you guys doing? I said, well, we thought we were doing pretty good, but in the fact that you guys are calling us in here probably means we're not doing that good. So. Yeah. So that segment you guys are so happy about, ceasefire. Let me show you something. Your ratings. And it turned out that as long as we were fighting, the viewership was going up, up, up, up, up, up, up. Then we would get to the point where we would say, and when we get back, where Newt and I agree, you're going to be surprised after these messages, and the audience would abandon the show and they would flee over to MSNBC or fox. That wasn't the worst part. The worst part is that poor Aaron Burnett, whose show came after hours, was then therefore starting in a ditch, because your only job in TV is to hold the audience and give the people behind you a bigger audience. Yeah, we're giving her a crater now. Her advertisers are mad. And so they said, you guys, do you think this is cute? The audience says they want positivity. They hate it. They don't want it. Keep fighting. And so I do want to suggest that every show I've ever done has had this element. I did the Redemption Project. We talked about criminal justice solutions. The worst ratings in CNN's history. I did the Van Jones show on Saturdays where we're bringing people together to find common ground. The worst shows in CNN history. So when people attack cable news for not doing positive stuff, I am the most positive host you are and the least successful host in CNN's history. And so there's something beyond just the. There's something going on. That said, I do think that we're in a different moment now. And I do think that information is now a commodity. Bad news. Listen, soon some bad news happens. I get nine different alerts from the economists and CNN and BBC and everybody else in my. It's a commodity.

Peter Diamandis (103:47)

I get it from my mom.

Van Jones (103:48)

Yeah, exactly. So. But education is now priceless.

Peter Diamandis (103:52)

Yeah, that.

Van Jones (103:53)

See, you know, the news of the day, priceless, I mean, is worthless. The news of the day is so cheap, it's a commodity. But the news of the decade, that's priceless. Can you help people understand what's going on? Can you educate people? Can you take all these points, positive and negative, encouraging and discouraging, and help people make sense of the world? And you said something earlier I think is very important. People are overwhelmed now. They only have so many synaptic. You know, you have the math on it, but people's brains only so big. You only got so much time and they're getting. They're getting overwhelmed. I think leadership is not to step forward and get people more freaked out, get people more afraid, demagogue or sensationalized, which is going to make people go to the wrong part of their brain where they're not going to be creative. I think leadership is to come forward and try to get people frames and understanding and metaphors to give them a better sense of what's going on and help people begin to solve their problems. I think the news industry across the board is failing in that. And I don't think at this point is an excuse to say that, you know, we're just giving the people what they want. We got to get some time to give people what they need.

Will.i.am (105:00)

Yeah. And, but also, I mean, I get my news from FYI, I'm out.

Van Jones (105:07)

Yeah.

Peter Diamandis (105:08)

You feel you have your AI filter than use. It's relevant to you.

Van Jones (105:11)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (105:11)

Or like, hey, I heard Trump just fired like some top Pentagon dude. Who is it? Can you pull up the latest information on that? And let's dive into that.

News AI Persona (105:26)

Hey, amigo. Seems that things are shaking up in the Pentagon since they're crazy, right? So Trump just fired Air Force General C.Q. brown Jr. Who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This move is part of a big reshuffle within the military ranks. I mean CQ Brown was a history making fighter pilot and a respected officer and now boom, he's out. What do you think this could mean for the.

Will.i.am (105:52)

Can you. Is there like any reasons I'm here with Van Jones, you know, from cnn say what's up to him. Maybe you guys could get into, you know, what they do on Ceasefire, on who, who's at fault? Is it racial? Like what's your perspective on it?

News AI Persona (106:13)

Hey, Van, what's up? It's great to have you here. You know, when it comes to these high level military shakeups, there can be a lot of layers, right? It's like peeling an onion, but with more intense political seasoning. So about the reasons for CQ Brown Jr's firing. It could range from strategic disagreements to political maneuvering. I mean, there's always a dance between military decisions and the political agenda of the administration. Crazy, right? Sometimes it's less about who's right or wrong and more about aligning the vision.

Will.i.am (106:49)

Or maybe, yeah. But given the fact that a chainsaw and a hack is being across the entire federal federally wide in America from Trump, it's hard to ignore that there isn't some type of agenda that isn't aligned with DEI suggestions to be removed. It's hard for me to not to think that that's not linked from your circuitry and logic, is it? Link?

News AI Persona (107:33)

Whoa, Van, you're diving deep. That was me and I love it. You know, when you see sweeping changes, chainsaw in a hack style across federal agencies, it's hard not to wonder if there's more beneath the surface than meets the eye. It's like a game of chess. Every move has its calculated purpose and aligning or shifting away from agendas like diversity, equity and inclusion. DEI could definitely be a part of that strategy. You know, there may be.

Peter Diamandis (108:03)

What I like is the ability to talk with the news. One of the challenges we have is when, when I turn myself over to the Crisis News Network or the LA Times or New York Post, I'm being fed one stream that an editor or a producer wants me to hear. Yeah, that's it. And that's all I have and when you're interacting with an AI, the other thing is, you know, I built, years ago, I built an AI model called Daily AI where I trained it, what I like and it searches the world's news for, for moonshots, for breakthroughs. I'm mostly focused on breakthroughs in AI or breakthroughs in longevity. And so it gets those. For me, that's the news that I care about now.

Van Jones (108:49)

Is that available to everyone?

Peter Diamandis (108:50)

It's free.

Van Jones (108:51)

It's available, yeah.

Peter Diamandis (108:52)

And you can actually create your own news feed from it.

Will.i.am (108:57)

Same with FYI. You go what we have called our daily. Not daily, our current news. Yeah, it's here. Sorry. It's called Radio AI.

Van Jones (109:06)

Yeah. I just want to say he's talking about his company. I actually have a company myself, please tell me. Which is called Rapport Co. RAPPER Rapport Co. And we're trying to use AI to improve firms EQ and not just their iq. One of the things we realize is that people are working in these distributed locations. You know, so you're on zoom with someone, you don't know if they even have on pants. You don't know a single thing about what happened to them that day. But you're supposed to somehow manage them or supervise them or they're, you know, these slack channels or people got on teams, it turns into the Vietnam War. The minute something happens in the news and people are not capable of managing people that they've never seen. Smell the pheromones. Like, you know, there's something that happens when people are together.

Peter Diamandis (109:54)

Yeah.

Van Jones (109:55)

So we, so we created something called Rapport Co. It's deceptively simple. It's a 15 second emoji based check in that people just check. What's your energy level? Three emojis, one person's exhaust, one person's happy. What's your workload? One desk is overflowing, one desk is empty. And anything you want people to know, My cat just died. My grandma turned 100 click in that 15 seconds. If everybody on the team does that for a week, the AI has the enormous insight into what's going on in the team and can then help the manager.

Peter Diamandis (110:27)

Yeah, just those few cues that can give context to how you're reacting to something.

Will.i.am (110:35)

Yeah.

Van Jones (110:35)

And so the Rapport AI becomes like this kind of coach to the manager. It's like, hold on a second, this person's having trouble. But most managers, even they know someone's having trouble. They don't know what to do. So the AI can then give a little bit of advice, can actually Write sample emails. And then also now the AI is smart enough, it actually can tell them why that's a good thing in terms of reciprocity. So we're working with the Columbia Difficult Conversations Lab. So this is all kind of science based and you know, it's small, but it makes a tremendous difference. The thing about it is too many technology companies are based on distraction or extraction as opposed to giving people the tools to be more human. And so Rapport co as our effort, I think you're going to see a lot more people who, because of the work has been done to make these technologies available, are going to come in with different mindset, different sense of what the purpose is. And I think also you're going to find people are going to need more help because there's going to be more information that people can absorb. So to your point about having AI help people absorb stuff, but people are also going to need help relating to each other because you don't have in a week now and three weeks and a month, you don't know what somebody's gone through. We went through these fires here, you know, I mean, I had no idea that, you know, you were, you had been so, so impacted by the fires. So, you know, there's gotta be a way for us to, to use these tools to help each other be better humans.

Peter Diamandis (112:09)

Yeah. If we don't, then AI and tech is gonna overrun us.

Van Jones (112:18)

Yeah, absolutely.

Peter Diamandis (112:20)

Gentlemen, you've been so generous with your time. Will and Van, thank you. Make Wakanda real again. The underlying theme here, it's using AI to really uplift humanity.

Van Jones (112:34)

Yes.

Peter Diamandis (112:34)

And I think we're at a level playing field, meaning it is just coming out and we have 8,7 billion smartphones. FYI is free and available on. You can go to.

Will.i.am (112:47)

Go to what URL to go to FYI AI. Go to the App Store on your iOS or go to the Google Play store. We'll be in cars this year as well.

Peter Diamandis (112:59)

Amazing.

Will.i.am (113:01)

And look out for the news.

Peter Diamandis (113:04)

My Tesla can finally speak to me. Well, maybe, maybe not. Tesla, what is it? What cars are going to be in?

Will.i.am (113:10)

I say that off camera because we're embargo right now, but March the 17th, March 13th we have our, our, our car announcement. Yes, in March 17th we have our announcement with bringing GPUs to the continent of Africa.

Peter Diamandis (113:26)

Yeah, love it. And so much to talk about there. And you know, I think the message of, of AI is not unapproachable. AI is going to become as fundamental to everybody as a phone is as electricity is it's part of the infrastructure of life and you might as well get good at it as soon as possible.

Van Jones (113:52)

I agree. And I just want to say to you personally how much I appreciate. So dream machine.org is the not for profit organization that I help to lead, which is working with Will. I am on this campaign and being partnered with Singularity University has taken us to a whole different level. We're also partnered with, with a code path. We're going into Atlanta and we're going to directly help small businesses in Atlanta get an unfair advantage by giving them these jet packs, by helping people to take off the shelf existing AI technology to make their businesses better. Because, you know, everybody's not going to go to Mars. But you know, if you've got a, if you've got some laundromats, if you've got a barbershop, if you can get your margin down, I mean, you can get your, get your margins up, you.

Peter Diamandis (114:35)

May get your cost down.

Van Jones (114:36)

Get your cost down, then you're going to do a whole lot better. And technology can let that happen. So look, I think, you know, I just want to say I, I have admired you for a gazillion years.

Peter Diamandis (114:47)

Thank you, buddy.

Van Jones (114:48)

You know, you're the X Prize. We actually did an X Prize for criminal justice inspired by you.

Peter Diamandis (114:54)

Thank you.

Van Jones (114:54)

Years ago. And so, you know, I think, I think you have created a hopeful vector and we're going to try and drive as many people down this vector as we possibly can.

Peter Diamandis (115:03)

Yeah, it's.

Will.i.am (115:04)

I echo the same thing that Van just said back in 2000. I think my first X Prize was 2008.

Peter Diamandis (115:14)

Okay.

Van Jones (115:14)

Wow.

Will.i.am (115:14)

2008. Singularity University.

Peter Diamandis (115:16)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (115:16)

Thank you so much for your hospitality. Make me a part of your community.

Peter Diamandis (115:20)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (115:20)

And if there's anything I could do to help you on, on, you know, expanding XPRIZE and Singularity, I'm your ally.

Van Jones (115:29)

Same.

Peter Diamandis (115:30)

Thank you, brother. Thank you.

Will.i.am (115:31)

Really, you're doing awesome work.

Peter Diamandis (115:32)

Thank you. And thank you for the work you're doing with, with Dean Kamen and First Robotics. It is God. It is God's work. My kids are in first and, and I love that. And, and excited to support your projects. Like, you know, Will, you were with me at the Abundance Summit a couple years ago. Van, you're going to be with me this year. I'm excited, excited for that Travis Kalanick will be there teaching everybody how to transform industries and make moonshots happen.

Will.i.am (115:57)

Is Naveen going to be there?

Peter Diamandis (115:59)

I'm sure he will be. I'm sure he will be. And yeah, we've got 600 CEOs that I'm. My mission is mentor them to go from success to significance. How do you use the extraordinary work and wealth and work and resources you have to uplift humanity? I think that we have the ability today to uplift every man, woman and child on planet Earth. And that's the world. A world like that is a world that's more peaceful, it's more loving. It's the world that we want for our kids. And it's a world where we finally have the tools to be able to do that we don't have. True. You know, there is nothing truly scarce. You know, technology is a form that transforms scarcity into abundance over and over again. Anyway, enough of that.

Will.i.am (116:45)

But. But yeah, just success to significance. I love that the work that you've been doing paved the way for a lot of entrepreneurs that become successful to go out and do awesome work like plant a trillion trees.

Peter Diamandis (117:01)

Yeah.

Will.i.am (117:01)

So one of the I. One of the good guys is Mark Benioff.

Peter Diamandis (117:05)

I love.

Will.i.am (117:06)

Mark's one of the good guys. And there's lots of good guys. Yeah. But some of them are. They start off good and they continue to do good. And some of them get inspired to do good once they have success. And what you do, how you do what you do reminds folks that once they get successful that they need to do some good in the world. And boy, do we need more of that reminding and pushing now because it seems like, you know, there's a lot of. A lot of Jedis turn sith. We ended there like we knew we went to the dark side. Em, you feel it?

Van Jones (117:52)

I feel it.

Peter Diamandis (117:54)

All right, and that's a wrap, guys. Thank you so much. By the way, where do they go for. Where do folks go? To find out more about Mako Condor.

Van Jones (118:01)

Real Dream machine dot org. Okay, is. Is where all the stuff is there. You can see all the stuff that. That Will says and. And. And stuff that we did in Atlanta and other places. So dreammachine.org and rapport co are a p. P. Co. It's a French word, so nobody know how to spell it.

Peter Diamandis (118:23)

Rapport Co. All right, love you guys.

Van Jones (118:26)

Thank you.

Peter Diamandis (118:26)

All right, everybody, thanks for. For listening to Moonshots. You know, this is the content I love sharing with the world. Every week I put out two blogs, a lot of it from the content here. But these are my personal journals. The things that I'm learning, the conversations I'm having about AI, about longevity, about the important technology transforming all of our worlds. If you're interested again, please join me and subscribe@diamandis.com subscribe that's diamandness.com subscrib/subscribe. See you next week on Moonshots.

Van Jones (119:11)

Martha listens to her favorite band all the time. In the car, gym, even sleeping. So when they finally went on tour, Martha bundled her flight and hotel on Expedia to see them live. She saved so much, she got a seat close enough to actually see and hear them. Sort of. You were made to scream from the front row. We were made to quietly save you. More Expedia made to travel Savings vary and subject to availability. Flight inclusive packages are atoll protected.