Moonshots with Peter Diamandis - How AI Will Change the Music Industry Forever w/ will.i.am | EP #70
Episode Date: October 26, 2023In this episode, recorded during this year Peter’s Executive Summit, Abundance360, Peter and Keith Ferrazzi discuss with will.i.am the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) on creativity, own...ership, and the human experience. 01:33 | will.i.am on AI: Surprising Perspectives 08:21 | Uniting Creativity and Technology 52:41 | Transforming Communities Through Empowerment Will.i.am is a multi-faceted artist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist best known as a founding member of the Grammy-winning group The Black Eyed Peas. Beyond his music career, he's a passionate advocate for STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) education and has made significant strides in the tech industry with various innovations. His visionary approach seamlessly blends creativity with technology, making him a prominent figure in both the entertainment and tech sectors. Download will.i.am’s new app for creatives: https://fyi.fyi/index.html _____________ I only endorse products and services I personally use. To see what they are, please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: Get started with Fountain Life and become the CEO of your health: https://fountainlife.com/peter/ Use my code MOONSHOTS for 25% off your first month's supply of Seed's DS-01® Daily Synbiotic: seed.com/moonshots _____________ I send weekly emails with the latest insights and trends on today’s and tomorrow’s exponential technologies. Stay ahead of the curve, and sign up now: Tech Blog Get my new Longevity Practices book for free: https://www.diamandis.com/longevity My new book with Salim Ismail, Exponential Organizations 2.0: The New Playbook for 10x Growth and Impact, is now available on Amazon: https://bit.ly/3P3j54J Learn more about my executive summit, Abundance360 _____________ Connect With Peter: Twitter Instagram Youtube Moonshots Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Life's a trip.
Make the most of it at Best Western.
Out of all the times to be alive,
this one here is like wowsers.
We could get it right, and as an optimist, I think we will.
Or it could be very wrong.
We're skirting on a very thin line between authenticity, ownership.
Do I own my facial math and facial recognition and AI right now? Nope.
Does Beyonce own her timbre and her voice right now? Nope. Does Beyonce own her timbre on her voice right now?
Nope.
We should.
If Leonardo DiCaprio's voice can be mimicked
and cloned to the T with AI,
shouldn't he own that?
Just by his, you know, physical right
of how his timbres produce his voice?
I believe that AI should not mimic a person. I'm preparing myself for this
time where humanity has to be more human than we've ever been because machines are going to
outdo a lot of the shit we used to do. And it's going to force us and push us to be more human to one another. In March of 2023, Keith Ferrazzi, the CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight,
and I sat down with Will.i.am for an extraordinarily vulnerable conversation about
Will's creative genius, his childhood upbringing, and his views on AI and how artificial intelligence
is going to be empowering the next generation of creators.
Who owns what when it comes to AI and the input it provides to creatives?
We're going to dive into this with Will.i.am.
If you don't know Will, you will in a moment.
He is a musician, a producer, the entrepreneur extraordinaire who has won multiple Grammys and sold over 33 million
records worldwide. He's a technologist. He's an inventor. He's creating extraordinary software,
which he'll tell you about. He's one of the biggest promoters and benefactors of FIRST Robotics.
He's the creator of the I Am Angel Foundation. So sit back for a beautiful conversation with Will.i.am and how one of the
leading creative thinkers of our time views AI. His views may surprise you. They did me. All right,
jump in. This took place during my private summit, Abundance 360, in March 2023. I'm super honored to introduce our next speaker, who is a legend in many different
industries, but also someone I consider a friend. He embodies leadership and innovation,
and huge positive impact on many people in the world of entertainment, of technology, of STEAM education, philanthropy.
A key element of his global success really is his multi-tiered career track and the amazing
people he knows globally around the world. He most definitely is a futurist. Whenever I get
a chance to see him, he is on the cutting edge. I mean, across all telecom,
all compute platforms. He's teamed up with Accenture and Apple and Adam Bank and Beats
and BBC and Coca-Cola and Gucci and Honeywell and IBM and Intel and ITV and JP Morgan Chase
and Marvel and Mercedes-Benz and Microsoft and Mercedes Benz and Microsoft and Penguin Publishing
and Pepsi and Salesforce, just to name a few.
Like him, he and I are both huge fans of Dean Kamen
and I pride myself again to call him a friend.
Do you want to bring Will up on the stage
and then embarrass him?
Yeah, no, let's do that first.
Okay, all right.
Please welcome Will Iyam.
So on the embarrassment piece, I didn't quite know what to do with somebody who's been interviewed as much as he's been interviewed.
So I thought, all right, let's make this easy.
I'll go to chat GBT and ask, what are the five questions Will Iyam does not want to answer?
And so that's what we've got to start with. Just kidding. But by the way, you should do that. It's really
interesting. So let me do a slightly different introduction. A very dear friend of mine
has been working with Will on some of his philanthropic contributions in the world.
And I said to him, I said, you know, what are the things that we wouldn't naturally
know?
And you probably know of his great musical talent, but do you know that he actually sold
more than 60 million records, won seven Grammys.
Now probably one of the most interesting songs that he's ever written actually won a presidential
election. most interesting songs that he's ever written actually won a presidential election if we remember yes we can song and its contribution to the Obama
election and actually if I'm not mistaken he broadcasted a song from Mars
in collaboration with NASA not I don't think you were personally there but you
broadcasted it from there otherwise Peter would be terribly jealous if you
were personally there in terms of your, he grew up in a very
poor community in Boyle Heights, but he then went back there, which is one of the reasons of being
here, success to significance. He went back there and made sure that every one of the projects had
5G internet in the entire community, if I'm not mistaken. His I Am Angel Foundation foundation now in Los Angeles alone serves 12,000 students in youth robotics
He gave 1 million dollars to then Prince Charles to really start
the
the stem cell program at the Prince's Trust he also got in pretty early at
Beats by Dre which is probably not a bad investment after it exited I believe to to Apple
Well, yeah, No one put money
in that. That was just like ideas.
Jimmy Iovine is like the best.
It's like my
hero. So you got sweat equity
on that one? No, so I would come
home for tours. Jim Basile
was one of the first
people that were like, you got crazy
ideas. Why don't you come up to Waterloo?
So I'd fly up to Waterloo? So I fly up to
Waterloo to the rim guys back in 2005, six, around that same time. Um, it was Paul Jacobs and Jim
Basile who would like encourage my wild, crazy ideas. Paul Jacobs from Qualcomm? Yeah. They were
like, you know, took me serious going to global GSM in Barcelona and I
would came home one year in 2006 and told Jimmy let's let's use our music to
sell our own stuff let's make our own stuff because Jimmy one year was like
you know what well maybe we need to make ketchup I met the Heinz family. They took tomatoes, put some sugar in it.
They're billionaires.
We need to find our ketchup.
So one year I come, I'm like,
yo Jimmy, let's make our own shit.
Sell our own stuff, bro.
Like we're always selling somebody else's stuff.
Imagine if we sell our own stuff.
So then in 2007, he's like,
you know, I was walking on the beach with
Dre,
and his manager wants him to sell sneakers.
And I remember our talk
that we had last year, and I
told Dre, fuck sneakers,
let's sell speakers.
You want to be a part of it?
I'm like, yeah, but I was thinking of my computers and shit.
He was like, yeah, we're going to start with headphones.
Then we're going to do computers.
And that's how it all started.
So I had like a small piece.
Well, he went on from there to be a real creator, if he hasn't already in his talents.
But how many of you in this room can say you have custom designed six distinct cars, of which one of them, the Flip, is something that Mercedes actually made?
He then went on to pitch an idea to Coca-Cola, which was an entirely new venture using their residual plastics, taking that to market along with the brand.
and most recently in the world that we all know,
which is the Web 3.0 and all the conversations we've been having today,
his new company, FYI,
which I think maybe would be a good place to kick off
in just understanding what is your intention
in building this regenerative AI community for creators?
So we're in Geneva.
We're at the first global competition.
You're on stage, I'm going on stage, and you're like peter check this out and will shows me this this platform like which is
the combination of uh you know we chat and zoom and uh and five other tech companies and it's
working flawlessly and i'm like holy shit what is that
uh well it's fyi and it's now powered by gpt4 which you got early access to what was your
vision what was sort of the creative moment of you because you've been building how many companies
have you generate ideas for well over the years so when when we sold Beats to HTC,
so one year Jimmy says,
you know what, Will,
one day you're going to realize that you shouldn't be the talent.
You need to collect talent.
So I'm like, wait,
you collected me?
I'm a part of your collection?
Get the fuck out of here.
Wow, you got me, Dre, Pharrell.
Wow, you got a collection of talent.
I was like, wow, okay.
I need to start collecting talent.
Ooh, I want developers.
I want rappers and beat makers.
I want developers that could develop software to make beats.
Software to write raps.
I'm going to go out and find real talent, next level talent. So when we sold beats to HTC, I went to Israel and acquired a machine learning team.
Went to Bangalore, acquired a natural language understanding team.
In Singapore, a natural language understanding team, and Singapore a natural language processing team
back in 2013, 12.
And we created a voice operating system by forking Android.
And who did I call?
Paul Jacobs to give us a Snapdragon Qualcomm chip.
We forked Android, put it on a Qualcomm chip,
got a technical acceptance from AT&T,
and it was a watch.
I remember the watch.
Came here.
Yeah, we were at X Prize.
Visionarium used to hold here.
Yeah, and there's this dude by the name Naveen Jain
who was like, gave me all this energy of like,
you know, to make me believe.
So certain people spark and plant a seed
to make you go out there and believe
that your ideas are valuable.
And that got us, you know,
from AT&T technical acceptance
to 3Mobile technical acceptance.
So that has everything to do with FYI.
So then we sold that to Vonage, that team to Vonage, and Majad Alpha Team.
So if you're in Dubai or UAE and you are at Carrefour or the Mall of Emirates or Vox Theatres,
and you're conversationalizing the softwares,
that voice AI is built by a team that I sold to them.
It's called I Am AI.
And that was from 2014, 15, 16, all the work, 15, 16, 17, till now. So during COVID, I realized that the creative community
had no software made for them.
So if you're a financer, software for you. If you're any field, there's software for you.
But when it comes to creatives, creative across all disciplines, you're working off of WhatsApp
or some messenger. And to do that, you need a Dropbox. And if you're having conversations about
the things that you're having conversations about the things
that you're working on, some of the conversations are in the comments. Some of them are on the text.
Some of them are in the email and shit's all over the place. And meanwhile, your IP and your team
flow is all scattered. So I was like, wow, imagine if there was like a singular interface for creative
enterprise where the messenger was the file storage and the digital
asset management and the calendar and the conferencing and elliptical cryptography keys
because why should an NFT have more controls and safety and privacy than your conversations and your digital assets when you're working?
Why just the NFT?
Why just the cryptocurrency?
Why can't it just be all my conversations,
all my data, and all my shit?
And then let's put generative AI in the middle of it
to where you and your team can collaborate
with different AIs collaborating.
Not just you and the AI on a silo,
and then you send screenshots of what you and the AI talked about to your friends.
But what if AI is all in the mix with you and your group?
Not just one AI, but a whole bunch of them.
And so that's FYI.
FYI.AI, focus your intents with AI.
Focus your ideas with AI not for your information
obviously it's that's focus your ideas and intents with by the way it's not an idea it's you know we
were just playing with it a few minutes ago I just we saw him earlier in a four-way conversation on
two different phones so two different individuals, two different creatives, basically getting into it and co-creating together
along with two AIs.
Well, there'll be infinites.
And there'll be those individuals.
It was just crazy to watch.
It was very cool.
Yeah.
So you said a sentence,
what, scarcity, technology takes scarcity
and makes it abundance?
Yeah.
So let's say like Mark Benioff, yourself, Dean Kamen,
you guys are hyper-networkers.
So any idea that you guys have, you go to your Rolodex,
you'd call anybody in your Rolodex to get things done.
But the random person in Boyle Heights or Compton or Watts,
they don't have an awesome Rolodex.
They have ideas, but nowhere to actually manifest that idea. So what used to be like your awesome Rolodex. They have ideas, but nowhere to actually manifest that idea.
So what used to be like your amazing Rolodex,
it's going to be an amazing Rolodex of AIs
to help people materialize their ideas on FYI.
So you have a clone of Tony Robbins and Mark Benioff
and Dean Kamen that you can bring into the conversation with you.
Not clones, just awesome AIs.
Because you want to be careful
with that word clones
when it comes to AI.
Because I believe that
AI should not mimic a person.
Because I write songs
and I own those songs.
But we're skirting
on a very thin line between authenticity ownership
so if you do i own my facial math and and facial recognition and ai right now nope does beyonce
own her timber on her voice right now nope we should if if leonardo dicaprio's voice can be mimicked and cloned to the t with ai shouldn't he
own that just by his you know physical right of how his timbers produce his voice there's so many
things that we have not crossed and we have not protected people yet so we can't say clone and ai
because then it brings up a whole bunch of ethical stuff where there's no regulations and governance on people's safety, their ownership, their identity.
Because identity and data is identity.
We need to make sure that identity protects people, their individualities, and their communities to come to distinguish yourself from AI and people.
distinguish yourself from AI and people. If we wind back to half the statement you just made a bit ago, you were talking a bit about your MTP, your massive transformative purpose around
bridging that digital divide. What are some of the things that you're really cranking on, like FYI,
that you think are going to be crucial in that journey that you're on? What are your moonshots within your massive transformative purpose?
Well, this decade is a very...
I think we're all...
If we spiritually had to pick what time we wanted to be alive,
at some point in time in our spiritual journey,
we all decided to be here at this point in time in our spiritual journey, we all decided to be here at this point in
time because this is the most transformational point in time for humanity.
This is it.
It's the 99th level of the game play.
Right.
It's out of all the times to be alive, this one here is like wowzers we could get it right and as an optimist I think
we will or it could be very wrong if there's no middle ground this is more
transformational than like electricity even though I was a pretty big one I
wasn't around but thank God they got it right. We got lights, bitch.
But we got it right.
This one is a different level of illumination.
What are you worried about in the short term?
What's the inflection point?
Do we get it right or get it very wrong?
Well, the digital divide is is so wide algorithmic bias we haven't seen how
disruptive it's going to be for communities yet because we're just in
the beginning of it data bias we know that they exist but yet we don't have a flock a herd of
inner-city poverty-stricken kids that are learning to write algorithms and
build you know systems training systems training data and the only way to fix algorithmic bias is to have a more diverse,
inclusive participation in making those algorithms that are going to be serving communities and
people that live in them.
So that's the reason why the work that we do at I Am Angel is super important, to have
people of color in and around robotics, computer science,
engineering. Earlier when we were talking to you before this conversation,
the question was put to you, you've used your celebrity, your fame, your wealth on multiple
different dimensions to try and make the world a better place.
And the question was, was that a recent transition or is that who you are?
Please answer it as you did before. And then I want to ask a follow-on question for those who
are parents listening. How did your parents make you who you are today? Because I think one of the things we
need to do is help make our kids contribute to society as part of their core DNA.
I'll start with today, I'm staying at a hotel because if I'm in LA for so long,
I just stay at a hotel because I don't want to stay at my house. So I've stayed at a hotel and then I want to just drive
which is like two minutes to get some breakfast.
But it took me two hours because it was the marathon. And in that
I had to drive all the way to Brentwood just to cut across
to come back around to Fairfax to come back up. It took me two hours.
In that two hours i remembered
my bus ride from east la to brittainwood to go to school and now i'm in my freaking gt 63 mercedes
and i'm just giving flashbacks of my childhood going through the the rich neighborhood um
through the rich neighborhood. Knowing that last month I was in a father block with the Mercedes team brainstorming on how to improve the driving experience in
the car. I'm like wow what the fuck how did my life how did this happen?
Freakin amazing.
But I grew up in a very poor neighborhood,
and I got bussed out to Britwood.
And somebody came up with that concept to have a magnet program to send kids from poor neighborhoods
to rich neighborhoods to get better education.
But while I lived in a poor neighborhood,
my mom would sign up for government assistance.
And there were like food drives where Brent would, where the rich kids would come to school
with canned foods or box foods to give to the poor families.
For many years, that food that they collected came to my house.
And during the summer, when we would get summer lunch programs,
because when you're poor and your kids are not in school,
you only have one meal a day, not three, because breakfast and lunch at school is a very important experience for families that can't
afford to have three meals a day so during summer these kids we were hungry
during the day so we had summer lunch programs in the summer lunch programs
our family gave out the free food because what you don't want to have is
rich people giving poor people free shit,
because the dignity, how they feel is bad.
So my family in the neighborhood, we always signed up to assist.
And my mom was the after-school teacher.
My uncle was the after-school basketball teacher.
My aunt worked at the homeless shelter.
My grandmother worked at City homeless shelter. My grandmother worked
at City Hope. So this is what we did when we were poor. So now that I've had success,
I would be doing this shit even if I was poor, because that's what my family still does today.
So it's not like...
Yeah.
So it's not like, you know.
So it's just the way my mom raised us.
But, yeah, today was awesome because I remember driving in the yellow bus through Brentwood like, wow, look at those big houses.
Damn, that's crazy. So that two-hour drive you had is going to be able to be 30 seconds with your new Jetson that you got today?
drive you had is going to be able to be 30 seconds with your new Jetson that you got today? Oh eventually when we're able to drive it through the cities but I
remember going through those neighborhoods like wow look at those big
houses now I'm like damn these houses are small. You know I just I, I saw the child in Will light up when he saw the Jetson preview earlier today.
Wow.
When it comes to somebody who likes his toys, I think you guys can really adopt it.
I've never seen a faster, yes, I want one, no, I want two.
Here's why.
It's going to be two for one, right?
Here's why, because I always have these projects that I have, side projects that I'm working on. So there's like these projects that I'm working on.
So there's like three projects that I'm working on currently.
One of which, when I asked the guys from Jetson, like, yo, how big is your team?
How long did it take to build this?
What did it cost?
And as I was excited, I was furious.
it cost and as i was excited i was furious because there's this one project that i'm currently working on which is like a a three-seater electric vehicle that has a tilt goes zero to 60 in 1.5
seconds and uh it's called a rocket huh no it's it's it's weighs a thousand pounds.
Yeah, and I'm like, darn it, I should have just not did that and just invested all my money with these guys.
But we're still going to push it through.
You don't give up, but yeah.
Wait, wait, before you go there, you just said something.
You said you don't give up.
No, hell no. How many times have you looked back and said,
I should have given up maybe a little earlier on that one?
Or how do you think about this idea of abandoning things versus perseverance,
dreams that you might have had that you today are willing to say,
well, not anymore?
How do you think about that trade-off?
If you have the ability to see something through no matter how long it takes,
you're supposed to see it through.
If it's your highest calling, right?
It's not just, I mean, there's times where you do something for the money
and it gets super hard.
Oh, you never do things for the money.
Okay, so just make that premise, right?
You never do things for money.
You do it because, like, your heart's burning. Yes. for money you do it because like your heart's burning yes like you do it because like oh my gosh
you waking up like oh my gosh like every moment of the day is like oh my gosh and if you have
a project like that you'd never give up don't care if like there's going to be these twists and these turns there's going to be ups and downs
if you're not a roller coaster rider
if you don't know how to
freaking like ride it
you shouldn't be here in the first place
but you never give up
there was this one thing like fail fast
like whoever said that's weak as fuck
you only fail fast
if
you're in it for money if you love it you you go through it and you're
gonna come out learning so much more at the end there's so many folks the reason why they say
fail fast because they're afraid of failing and they don't want people to know they failed
so fail quick.
Right?
So that's what an investor would say.
We're going to go back and rewrite all those agile operating systems in your organization.
No, but dreamers should not.
A dreamer should not fail fast.
That's a good one.
There you go.
So, Will, the conversation here is success to significance.
We've got a room full of successful entrepreneurs, CEOs, business owners.
And, you know, there's a point at which you make enough money and you can't spend it in a lifetime.
You don't want to leave it to your kids and ruin their lives. You don't want to leave it to your kids and ruin their lives.
You don't want to leave it to your lawyers to give away after you're dead.
And I guess one of my missions through Abundance360
is help people play at a bigger game, right?
To do those things.
I believe that the world's biggest problems
are the world's biggest business opportunities,
and why not go and solve the world's biggest problems?
are the world's biggest business opportunities, and why not go and solve the world's biggest problems?
Can you, as you think about huge,
scary-ass problems that you want to go after,
do you dive blind?
Do you go pull a team together?
How do you think about going to do something big, bold, a moonshot?
Teams.
Putting teams together.
The team building.
Having dream partners to tackle.
Collectibles.
Yeah, you want to have dream partners to tackle nightmares.
The only way out of a nightmare is to dream out of it.
Like the moment you wake up from a nightmare,
you're eventually going to go back to sleep and face that nightmare.
But you want to create the dream.
And that dream team, that assembly of that dream team
is how you creatively solve problems but I wouldn't even look at him
as problems you're just creating and that creation of whatever that issue is
is a beautiful task but you create to create a better world in not just to go
in and flip money to make more money yes is that true how do you think about that um
i don't i don't um i think that that's my biggest issue
um i don't look at it from making money i've I've been blessed to have made money to fuel my idea manifestations.
And some of my ideas have made money, but I don't go in it from making money. And it's
the same way with songs. There's some songs that I wrote that are like, yo, this is going to be a smash.
And then there's some songs that are like, oh, this is how I feel right here and I got
to get this out.
And that Where's the Love is this is how I feel right here.
I got to get this out.
I Got a Feeling is this is going to be a smash smash but where's the love is a special
one I wouldn't be I wouldn't be able to be at the seat to write I got a feeling
if it wasn't for where's the love so purpose from the heart questioning
what's going on that and I apply that same methodology to coming up with ideas and having the, you know, being audacious and ambitious and fearless to then go to Muttar Kent at the time when he was the CEO of Coca-Cola and say, hey, companies the size of Coca-Cola should be verbs in society.
If you don't believe me, Google it.
google it um and your verb is coke backwards for ekoc for eco consumption eco collaboration eco concept eco cycle eco community and let's take your byproduct create a new base cloth and
license that to other companies to execute their sustainability efforts and we call that eco c
so are those eco cycle levi's are those eco-Cycle Levi's? Are those Eco-Cycle Beats?
And so they bought that idea.
And so we arm wrestled for a while
who owns Coke backwards.
So I own that with them,
which is another crazy shit.
Like, what?
Who the fuck would have thought that one?
So everybody, I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me
and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love.
The company is called Fountain Life.
And it's a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented physicians.
You know, most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body.
We're all optimists.
Until that day when you have a pain in your side,
you go to the physician in the emergency room and they say,
listen, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have this stage three or four going on.
And, you know, it didn't start that morning.
It probably was a problem that's been going on for some time.
But because we never look, we don't find out. start that morning. It probably was a problem that's been going on for some time, but because
we never look, we don't find out. So what we built at Fountain Life was the world's most advanced
diagnostic centers. We have four across the U.S. today, and we're building 20 around the world.
These centers give you a full-body MRI, a brain, a brain vasculature, an AI enabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque,
a DEXA scan, a grail blood cancer test, a full executive blood workup. It's the most advanced
workup you'll ever receive. 150 gigabytes of data that then go to our AIs and our physicians
to find any disease at the very beginning. When it's solvable, you're going to find any disease at the very beginning when it's solvable.
You're going to find out eventually.
Might as well find out when you can take action.
Fountain Life also has an entire side of therapeutics.
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Go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter.
It's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners.
All right, let's go back to our episode. Tomorrow morning, this group of Titans are
humbly going to meet each other and have a conversation about some of the places they're
struggling, some of the places they're looking for transformation in their lives. We believe that
through empathy and vulnerability great relationships are
created so question I would have for you is whether it's personal or professional
where are the opportunities for your transformation what's what what are some
of the things that right now you're working on it's a big deal preparing Preparing myself for what's coming.
And AI is an amazing...
Like I said, we all came here spiritually for this moment.
And what we're experiencing is a massive transformation to how we do things.
If you're a mathematician, a calculator, wow.
Probably can't out-calculate a calculator.
You're not going to out-logic a logic machine.
And these new creative tools, it's amazing.
It's going to render a lot of jobs obsolete.
If you're a bus driver, that won't be your job in 2030.
Truck driver, delivery driver.
If you're a legal assistant and you read through the contracts, that's not your job.
If you're a finance manager, that's not your job. If you're a finance, you know, manager,
that's, that's, that's not your job. Um, a lot of jobs are going to be gone in these next 10 years.
And, um, but for the, the hyper creative, that person that can't, that never was able to sleep,
the person that exhausted their friends and family
and their close ones with like another idea they're like oh come on bobby dude i'm sleep dude
and that person felt like gosh i've exhausted every single person with an idea now they feel
liberated because now they have a freaking ping pong partner to freaking go head to head with
and they've never felt freer ai is going to supercharge that hyper creative i know what
that feels like when you call your friend randomly because you got another idea to fine tune and
you've exhausted your whole freaking rolodexx. So I'm preparing myself for this time
where humanity has to be more human than we've ever been
because machines are going to outdo a lot of the shit we used to do.
And it's going to force us and push us to be more human to one another.
And that's going to be an amazing time.
At your core,
what do you believe
your superpower is
that can't be
chat-GBT'd out?
Right now,
it's not going to out-idea me.
Like, original idea.
Ever?
No.
And I don't want to say that arrogantly.
It won't.
Because it doesn't have the heart and what's generating that idea.
Yeah, it's going to come up with ideas, but it's not going to relate to the human.
It's not going to have the emotional drive behind yeah so the ideas the ideas are like human ideas or that better that a human connection that's
cool it's gonna come it's gonna do some awesome shit don't get me wrong this
shit is fucking amazing but I just know that it's going to push people like me
to fucking do even
more awesome shit.
I don't sing like Michael Jackson.
I can't dance like
freaking James Brown. I can't play
the piano like Stevie Wonder.
I can't wail like fucking Jimi Hendrix.
But I got some fucking
ideas.
Right? And so,
hyper creatives do not let
other genius dim their light.
It makes your light even brighter.
Like, oh shit,
I'm inspired by you.
Look what I can do.
And that's what AI is going to do
but this time it's going to do it
from a human to human perspective.
We're going to be more human
with one another.
And if you think about like
body dysmorphia,
what filters have done to people,
how
I'm worried that
there's people
that look at themselves on Instagram
filter and that's
what they want to look like now. and they go and change their body around the change their face around
they don't they're depressed inside and if that's what happened to camera
imagine what's going to happen to people when they rely on the machine to think
for them imagine you're on a group chat and you feel daunted that everybody's firing off and now a eyes fucking firing off
More than you are
So you feel like oh shit. I'd rather be represented by my AI version of myself. Mm-hmm
There's coming new types of psychological I don't feel i'm not there adequate adequate yeah
so these are things that we have to be we need to empathize on we need to make sure that we are
you know or more patient with one another um you see how remember when we were in elementary school?
Remember being in the classroom
and the teacher said, raise your hand?
Some people didn't raise their hand.
The ones that were like extroverts raised their hand.
Those folks that felt like, oh, I don't know.
I don't want to be called upon.
I don't want to be judged
because I don't want people to think that I don't know.
Do you know what's coming? How people are going to behave in conversation. We are in a society right now with
the most awesome tech and we are talking with memes and emojis and SMS short sentences. That's
what most people behave in conversation. They are responding with pictures, memes, and emojis.
At the time where AI is rifling off deep, complex thoughts.
Look at how unbalanced we are already starting off.
Now imagine the body dysmorphia
that filters have done to people.
What's gonna happen psychologically to people when mental health is a big subject?
Moving forward, this is how we're starting off.
Chad GPT, oh my gosh, look at this.
Ask all these questions.
People who graduated college, they leave college remembering things.
Now, it's about not knowledge. it's about being curious and the right questions
to ask.
Yeah.
I'm not sure that anybody else has heard the term intellectual dysmorphia, but I think
we might have coined it this evening thanks to you.
Yeah.
Will, there's a lot of fear mongering around AI. I just want to talk one second about the ability it has to level the playing field
at the same time that we're concerned about a digital divide, right,
to make healthcare democratized and demonetized and education democratized and demonetized.
We're going to have Sal Khan on stage with us on Tuesday
from Khan Academy, right, who just partnered up with OpenAI. We'll have Imad Mustaq tomorrow.
He's about to roll out an educational program across all of Malawi using stability AI.
There is the potential for this to, just like Google is the same for the poorest child and
the wealthiest child, as long as they have a smartphone, there is the potential for this to, looks like Google is the same for the poorest child and the wealthiest child, as long as they have a smartphone.
There is the potential for this to level much of the playing field out there.
Yes?
Yeah, forever learning.
And health.
Yeah, that also comes with forever learning.
So the reason why we have health issues is because people really don't know much about
their bodies and nutrition,
what a calorie actually is. The junk food, survival food that's around them at disposal.
So forever learning is super important where we're going. So I believe that AI will play a big role in that concept of forever learning.
Not you go to elementary, you go to junior high, you go to high school, you go to college for eight more years,
and then that's all you know and you're never going to learn anything.
And then you work for some odd years and retire.
That's old school.
You're going to have something that's in your life like aspirational GPS.
Like right now, we know what GPS is geographically.
I could get from here to there.
You can tell Siri or whatever directions to LAX.
And if it tells me to make a right when I should have went left,
it does a recourse
instantly.
And ETA.
But the same isn't for like
I want my bank account to be X
in the next five years.
There's no aspirational
GPS. This is what I want to accomplish
in my life. This is what I want to be
in the next five years.
There's no aspirational GPS.
There's GPS for destination, not GPS for destiny.
And so is AI going to play that role for us?
And if it is, how ethical is it going to be?
Are there regulations?
Are there governance to make sure that we're protected?
And with all of that, how are we safe? I think you just created a new product
for Merrill Lynch. What? The aspirational financial GPS. No, that's FYI, bro. Okay, got it.
How long are you going to live and what are some of your really big bucket list items between now
and then? What? How am I going to live?
How long are you going to live?
The conversation we have here a lot is, you know,
how long do you want to live a healthy life?
How am I going to live?
110 is mine.
What's your number?
I'm going to live forever.
Sorry.
That's a freaking scary question.
Yeah, without a target, you'll miss it.
So what's your target?
With all this technology that tomorrow you can sign up for
120 good there you go and we so bucket list items between now and then one or
two biggies I have a school and that school teaches kids that have no parents
or come from some poverty-stricken area
forever learning.
And that campus is for R&D on all things tomorrow.
And it's like a hybrid of MIT
and, yeah, that's my dream is to have that
you still thinking about being a dad a dad and in ways I am a dad because of
the kids that I support but one day I would have my own kids. Unfortunately, I'm gonna be a
grandpa dad. I'm 40, just turned 48 two days ago. Young man, very young. I had my kids
when I was 50. Yeah, what's up bro? You gotta play it, by the way it's one of the best
longevity programs ever, They keep you young.
Will, people here who have gotten to the pinnacle,
they've sold their company, their company's running on automatic,
they're a little bit bored in what they're doing,
they're excited here.
Going back to the success to significance,
what would you tell them what's the steering question about how they use their talent their
treasure their tech their connections how do you think about that building building teams, identifying leaders to expand those teams to solve whatever problem.
There's a bunch of problems to solve.
And there's ways to solve them in a beautiful way that encourages, that empowers and enables.
And maybe business comes out of it.
and enables, and maybe business comes out of it. Maybe a solution comes through that journey of 12 years.
It's really a 12-year program.
Meaning, if you're going to get into something, be prepared to take it on for a dozen years.
Yeah.
People forget that most successful companies that you think of were overnight successes
You know, it's overnight success after 11 years of hard work. So I
remember it was 2008 we just did yes we can and
I was jazzed and pumped and mark being off introduced me to
and pumped and Mark Benioff introduced me to general Colin Powell and I'm sitting next to him he's to the left of me we're in San Francisco and I'm like
hey general Colin Powell it's nice to meet you you know now that you know
people that got activated and you know did our part what do you think a person
like me should do to keep the momentum going now that Obama is elected? He said, if I were you, Will, I would focus on the neighborhood that I
come from, that you come from. I'm not, I don't want to be assumption, to assume, but I'm pretty
sure it's some inner city. I'm like, yeah, it is. He was like, focus on that. There was nothing to
hold you back or slow you down. And you could do some serious work with the energy that you have and the commitments you have.
So I started there in 2008 with 65 kids.
And then Ron Connery introduced me to Lorraine Powell Jobs.
And Lorraine Powell Jobs had a program called College Track.
And I asked her, hey, can we bring that to L.A.?
She says, well, I have no plans of taking it to L.A.
It's only in the Bay Area
and if and if we consider it it's a big responsibility on you because you have
to fund it and that's a 10-year commitment so I'm like I have to fuck
this is your program she was like yeah but be fair, we only focus in the Bay Area.
I had no intentions on taking it to Los Angeles.
And it's a $10 million commitment.
Because you have to see these kids through high school and to college.
And you have eighth graders.
They haven't even graduated yet.
So it's ten
years to the last two years of middle school four years of high high school
four years of college I'm like all right at that point in time I didn't have that
much money so I'm like ten million bucks
So I'm like, 10 million bucks?
Fuck it.
Let's do it.
I'll figure it out.
So we figured it out.
65 kids, now it's 12,000 students.
We signed up another 10 years.
That's what a person can do when they have no money.
Imagine what you can do with the money you guys have.
One time, Dean came in.
In Dean's
house. And Dean's like,
God, so much energy.
This dude's energy is like, I thought
I had energy. This Dean came in, God.
He's freaking like
electricity.
So Dean's like, we've been doing first for
20 years nobody knows about it so I'm like have you put it on TV yet
he's like nobody wants to put see a robotics competition at least that's
what they tell us I was like oh we're playing the Super Bowl this year. I think we can figure out how to put it on television.
So I called ABC.
I said, hey, how much does an hour of time cost?
They were like, well, we're on you about a million bucks.
So I was like, okay, I'll buy an hour of time in September back to school program.
So they sold me an hour. So then I called Dean. Hey, Dean, I got an hour of time in September back to school program. So they sold me an hour.
So then I called Dean.
Hey Dean, I got an hour of TV.
It's gonna take the robotics competition
that we play the halftime show.
We're gonna put it on television.
The problem was nobody wanted to put up the risk money.
Everybody wants to do things,
but who's putting up the risk money?
Quiet.
So somebody has to put up the risk money.
So I was like, fuck it, I'll do that too.
So we did it.
Made our money back.
At least we broke even, but more importantly, more people knew about Verse.
And that's when General Charlie, sorry um general charlie bolden
from nasa then calls me that's how i got the song to mars because he says how can you do what you
did for first for nasa hey everybody this is peter a quick break from the episode i'm a firm believer
that science and technology and how entrepreneurs can change the world is the only real news out there worth consuming.
I don't watch the crisis news network I call CNN or Fox and hear every devastating piece of news on the planet.
I spend my time training my neural net the way I see the world by looking at the incredible breakthroughs in science and technology,
how entrepreneurs are solving the world's grand challenges, what the breakthroughs are in longevity, how exponential technologies are
transforming our world. So twice a week, I put out a blog. One blog is looking at the future
of longevity, age reversal, biotech, increasing your health span. The other blog looks at exponential technologies, AI, 3D printing,
synthetic biology, AR, VR, blockchain. These technologies are transforming what you as an
entrepreneur can do. If this is the kind of news you want to learn about and shape your neural
nets with, go to dmandus.com backslash blog and learn more. Now back to the episode.
Can I ask those of you who are supporters of FIRST,
can you stand up one second? Just go ahead and stand up if you're a FIRST supporter here.
All right. So every year we raise money through the Longevity Platinum Program and through A360
for FIRST, take people to Dean's home. FIRST is one of the most extraordinary
programs, and you are one of the FACES advocates, promoters of FIRST. Can you take a second and
just tell, because it's religion. I made a deal with Dean the first time I met him. He would
support XPRIZE, but he said, first and foremost, you must support FIRST, and it's been a deal I've
kept. And I donate and support every year.
What is FIRST?
What does it do?
And why is it important?
So FIRST is...
For inspiration?
It's, first of all, FIRST is the most inspirational program for youth robotics or youth empowerment,
for youth robotics or youth empowerment,
youth acknowledgement,
seeing how amazing these kids work and solving problems and how technical they are
to building tomorrow's tools.
It's amazing.
And I was transfixed the moment I saw the kickoff
in New Hampshire in 2009.
And since then, vowed to bring that program to inner cities like mine.
And I started with, I think we had three teams.
And those three teams now turned into 400 schools across la so out of all
the programs our la usd collaboration with first is the biggest lau school district that has the robotics teams across America.
And I thank Dean all the time for trusting.
Imagine what his board must have thought when I went
and said, hey, I wanna, like, he's in a rap group, he goes out to clubs all the time,
is that who we want to represent first?
And the reason why you have to take that in consideration
on how protective and concerned they might have been,
because it's not like there was another person
that comes from popular culture
that was working with FIRST Robotics before I I came there so of course the board would probably have
been a little concerned but to Lily and Tatiana and I am angel foundation how
delicate and that we've been at the same time as taking it to our heart like it was our program.
That's not my program.
It's Dean's program.
But you adopt it like it's your program because it is the best program.
And when you have something that is someone else's, that you adopt like it's yours,
that is now my North Star.
that you adopt like it's yours, that is now my North Star.
Because I acknowledge the responsibility and the accountability and how it's transformed my community.
Like it truly has transformed my community.
We've sent kids to Dartmouth, to Brown, to Stanford, to MIT.
I mean, not MIT.
That's where they want to go.
That's the dream.
And one of our kids said, I couldn't
get into MIT or Carnegie Mellon, but I got into Brown.
So we're really, really, really happy with the results.
70% of our kids, 100% graduation rate,
70% of which go to school for a STEM skill set.
So yeah.
So the question,
you've been so crazy generous in the world and to so many causes.
There's a lot of folks here that might be able to be supportive of you.
I would ask two questions.
One is, is there an ask for this audience
in terms of their individual participation in anything
you're working on that you'd like to say?
I am Angel Foundation first.
Whatever it is.
And then the second thing is, at a minimum,
you've got a lot of influencers here.
Is there a specific behavior change
you'd like to ask this group of individuals to consider?
How they walk around in the world?
Is there some X to Y that you could imagine that the world would be better if they picked
up some behavior change?
So a cause that they could support in and some behavior change.
I'll answer the second one first. The fact that everybody's in this room,
that behavioral, the idea of a behavioral change is not needed because they're rocking,
we're all rocking in the vibration of the optimism of Peter and we all rhyme with that
of Peter and we all rhyme with that that vibration so to say that there's a vibrator change would be oh nope we're all vibing so this is an awesome group
if there was a behavioral change then that will reflect Peter's magnetism and how he's curated this event.
So everybody's like rock solid.
First, for some reason,
raising money to make machines smart is super easy.
Raising money to make kids smart is super hard. Wow.
So at I Am Angel, that's all we want to do is make sure that we make kids smart.
Because if there's any time kids needed to be smart, moving forward,
it's right now as we face intellectual dysmorphia
as a issue that no one's thinking about.
We're excited about GPT.
Whoa, these natural language models.
You know what's going to happen to kids.
You know what's around the corner.
If somebody can program, you could create I to do a bunch of stuff you could create you can create an AI to scrape
all your Facebook information that's for sale by the way to scrape facial data from your family members
on your Instagram page as they posted all their snacks and foods.
That's for sale, by the way.
To then call you, mimic your family,
which is not regulated, by the way,
and fuck with people's minds.
And hit you with all the targets that affect how you feel.
Because there's no governance by the way.
That's where we are by the way.
And none of that is like, we have to be super empathetic.
We have to be super mindful.
And at the same time, make sure our kids are prepared for this tomorrow.
That's starting now, by the way.
Let's take just two or three brief questions.
And then let's give Will a chance to actually have dinner.
Nora.
Hi.
I have actually a question related to that,
sort of intellectual dysmorphia,
but generally ways that we could potentially combat knowing whether something is human or not,
authenticity, which has a whole bunch of other consequences.
Anyway, there's a log that is,
I think was used by the SEC that predicts like anything that's
naturally or organically occurring is going to have a certain number of like the number
of volcanic eruptions or the number of hairs on your head or stars in the galaxy.
It all falls on like this distribution of like, if it starts with a one, it's way more
likely. Starts with a one, it's way more likely.
Starts with a two, second most likely.
I think three is somewhere there, and it drastically drops off at nine. I was wondering if there's ways that you could use that,
or even personality typology to program AI to combat bias.
Are there ways we can use certain tools that capture humanity in a distinct way
to solve some of these problems? I don't know the answer to that. All I know is this deep fake stuff
is going to get even more indistinguishable from real stuff.
Ray, who's a dear friend, Ray will be with us
answering questions on Thursday.
His prediction is 2033, high bandwidth BCI
to the neocortex, the brain.
How do you feel about that?
Are you number one on the waiting list or never?
that are you number one on the waiting list or never never and that's because I don't know what's on the other side of that and I grew up apostolic And I don't trust the algorithm to put my mind that's connected to my spirit there.
Fascinating. All right. One last question from Annie here. Behind you.
Hey, Will. You've been an incredible creator your entire career and we work with
startups all the time where founders run into big blocks. How do you get past that if you
ever run into blocks where you've got a dream, you've got something in your heart? What's
your technique? What's your advice? Oh, when you hit a wall or an anxious, a muddy, anxious surface,
do you just create more?
I've never had a block.
The reason why you have a block
is because you're worried about
getting it wrong
and improv tells you
jazz tells you
there's no such thing as wrong
you create
and you wake up
you look at it
maybe it's horrible
but you still created
and the moment you
create and you're judgmental on your own stuff is when you hit a block but you're
not supposed to create and judge yourself you're just supposed to keep on
creating free of judgment of your own self because yeah that's yeah you don't judge
what you create
thanks
ladies and gentlemen
give it up for Will.Am