Musician, producer and entrepreneur will.i.am compared the AI to early video games during a discussion at Business Insider's CMO insider breakfast on Tuesday in Cannes. “AI is in its early stages,” he said. “It's Pac-Man. It's not even a Hello yet.”
Will.i.am, the founder of the platform Fyi.ai, was interviewed by Jamie Heller, editor-in-chief of Business Insider, who had BCG as the founding sponsor.
Early video games required a level of imagination from the player without sophisticated graphics and a real story. This same level of imagination is needed from “people who love AI, when your imagination is training it, or those that it learns from your imagination.” He said that AI would not suppress creativity, but it would provide room to enhance it.
AI may be in its early stages, but its potential impact over the next few years is undeniable. One area that needs to be adjusted to create the path of AI is higher education.
So fyi.ai recently partnered with Arizona State University to enhance the learning experience and provide technology to prepare students for the reality that awaits them at graduation at the end of the decade. “When you go out into the world, you're not just competing with humans,” he said of these students. Rather, he said there is a “onstroke of agents” that replaces the work of students going to school, and no one is trying to offset how they compete.
He said he is trying to provide a pathway to help students create their own agents by working with fyi.ai. So do their agents when they graduate. “Humans have to be able to compete with the market, and that marketplace will be like a ghost bot doing a great job,” he added.
Like-minded partner
Fyi.ai currently works with brands such as F1, Mercedes, Qualcomm and more. Will.i.am said that when looking for brands to collaborate with, a sense of values is needed.
“If the values aren't aligned, that can be a problem,” he said. “It would be difficult to work with companies that have data privacy practices that have not actually gelled how they travel in this AI space,” he added that he is afraid that AI will be able to follow the same trajectory of many social media platforms.
“There have been a lot of issues with data practices and lack of regulation and governance around it,” he said. “So, if it comes to this new era, we're stepping into the line with AI, so that's not a good result.”
