Tomorrow, Today
AI Needs Intention, Not Fear | will.i.am on Leadership, Creativity & the Future of Artificial Intelligence
10 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What intentions should guide AI development?
When you have the right intentions, when you have a moral compass, when there's ethics at the core of the products you build. It's not the tech, it's the greed. Is that the fate of AI? It's an honor to be here. We are at the CES show shooting for Tomorrow Today and CNBC. Thank you, Will. Thank you. So I'm just like a enthusiast.
Chapter 2: How does greed impact the perception of AI?
a tinker, a thinker, an ideator, a manifester. I love making stuff. I know that you had a very humble beginning. You used to take a yellow bus from East L.A. to Brentwood. And I come from slums in India. And I actually used to watch the rich kids from my house. And I'm sure you were watching as you were passing by.
So what came to your mind when you were watching outside and what you did not want to be when you were watching that? So when you're in a poor neighborhood, you don't know you're poor because everyone's poor. You only know you're poor when you see how someone else is living.
And because I went to Brentwood and I saw how people were living, I'm like, why are you living like this and I'm living like that?
Chapter 3: What lessons can be learned from humble beginnings?
What are we doing wrong? But it wasn't until I met a Persian family, Misharif, and I asked, how do you live like this? Because she was a single parent, had two beautiful daughters. And she was like, Will, I worked really hard. I come from Iran after the civil war. And I worked really hard. And I came to the country, studied, became a teacher.
And someone that's come from a war-torn country came to our country. figured out how to make their way to where they could take care of their family in the most luxurious, that blew my mind. And from there, I wanted to apply that same type of focus. It's just focus, that work ethic of focus on who you surround yourself with.
Like, if you wanna build an awesome company, you gotta hire the right people. You want to have a freaking awesome team that wins the Super Bowl? You've got to have the right players. You want to go from a nightmare and dream and manifest that dream to change the reality? You've got to pick the right friends.
There's no way you're going to get out of your circumstance if you're hanging out with folks that don't resemble the life you want to live. It's like your company. You are the company you keep. And you could end up either working for a company and helping somebody else with their dream, or you could be very selective on the company you keep and you manifest your dream. Absolutely.
So you're saying that poverty is your origin story, not like your identity. First off, when I was poor, it was beautiful. I have no like, that was the most beautiful experience. And I love my neighborhood. That's why I go back to my neighborhood. I have my foundation there. We serve about 500 schools with my robotics program, serving over 14,000 students. Like I'm committed to my neighborhood.
Yes, I was able to get out.
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Chapter 4: How does community involvement shape AI leadership?
But I want to go back. And that's part of the dream that I have with the Trinity, is to manufacture the Trinity in the neighborhood while teaching the community robotics and agentic systems. You know, not everything should be like, I want to be the richest. I want to have more than that. I want to change.
I'm on a mission to like, you know, because when I was in the hood, people came and gave us food. Somebody had a big heart and was, you know, provided programs like the food drive. I was one of the recipients, the kids in the line getting free cheese, free milk, free warm lunches. And so now that I made it out. You don't want to shut the door on them. Yeah.
I brought free Wi-Fi to my neighborhood during COVID. I have a robotics program in my neighborhood. In college prep, I've sent hundreds of kids to school with my IIM scholarship. And now I want to take it to the next level. Let's build a vehicle. I know that's audacious. But you've got to have intent. I remember back in the day when you would say, wow, this is made in China.
Back in the day, that was in Pakistan. That's a nice jacket. I can stand in the house. That's nice. But I'm from India. Hey, we can all get along. So China is inspirational. What Shenzhen was able to accomplish in 30 years, what it is now, like that's fantastic. Why can't that happen to Boyle Heights? Like Singapore is, my mom is older than Singapore. The UAE, my uncle's older than the UAE.
And so when you have countries that are under 70 years old and they're booming, why can't that happen to Compton? Why can't that happen at Fifth Ward? Why can't that happen to South Bronx? Why can't every inner city overcome its issues? And the intentions, you know, intentions...
all we need Google knows about that because they said attention is all we need transformer what the attention is all you need paper the transformer paper it transformed how we learn transform how we exchange knowledge with the large language model what up Aiden he's one of the authors for for the transformer paper founder of cohere so intentions is all we need and we will transcend
Attention is all we need, we transform. Intentions is all we need, we transcend. When you have the right intentions, when you have a moral compass, when there's ethics at the core of the products you build, Yeah. So let's talk about a little bit about AI. There's a lot of fear about AI. People are worried about it.
Like moms talking about basically like, you know, children and like, you know, workers talking about losing their jobs. But you seem to be the guy who's actually embracing AI like as though there is no tomorrow. Why are you so different? And what are you seeing that is so different than all the others? I'm optimistic at my core.
And I don't think there's anything going to be worse than being in the slum or being in the projects. Hey, when you were in the slums and I was in the projects, AI didn't create that.
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Chapter 5: What role does creativity play in the age of AI?
So will it ever get any worse than what you experienced? Absolutely not. There's nothing to lose. So from what we experienced and what we've overcome, there will be nothing that bad. And look what we were able to do. Your optimism got you to where you are. My optimism got me to where... So if I see AI, I'm like, no, that's a solution for us. Because when we, the lives we live, we didn't have AI.
Had we had AI, people wouldn't live like that. Because they could solve their problems themselves. Absolutely. It's a liberator. if you think about it, you know? And that's why I've seen what robotics did to my neighborhood. I've seen what, you know, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, skill set did to my kids.
How it motivated them, how it brought them like, this like, I see myself contributing, you know? They have the tools to identify the problem, to critical think, to solve problems. And AI can be that. So when people are afraid of AI, they're afraid of the business model. I don't know if they're really truly afraid about AI. It's the business model. as to why they're like, hey, what's going on?
What's going to happen? Because their gut and their intuition tells them that this technology coupled with that business model, that's the one. It's not the tech. It's the greed. Got it. So how do you prevent greed and teach intelligence virtue? Well, first off, can you do that in the first place? Can people do that? Yeah, think about how complex it is to walk down the street in India.
How many cars are there and bikes and cows? And the cows are safe. Yes. And you know, like, I gave this example. I gave this example and I got to tell you this. So in India, it's very, you got to be a 360 driver, right? Like, because people's sense of direction and people's sense of, like, lane is, like, almost lost. So, like, usually people say, like, I'm taking a left turn.
They'll indicate left, but they'll turn right. And they'll show a right and then they'll turn left. And they will have both hands up and then they'll start going straight. So I had a very weird experience. My driver knows how to drive. And every other driver knows what the driver is trying to tell him. The intent is shared.
But when the cow is sitting in the center of the road, no one knows how to communicate with the cow. Right? So a lot of like building of the technology and all of this seems to be like that intent sharing problem. Like I know what I'm trying to build, but the intent is not clearly translated and communicated from a literacy perspective.
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Chapter 6: How can ethics be integrated into AI systems?
So how do you solve the problem of embracing this? No, the reason why I wanted to use that as a metaphor is because cars are dangerous.
But...
Folks that are operating the vehicle have a license. Folks that put the vehicle on the road have a license. And in a very complex environment like India where you have cars, bikes, and cows, even the cow is safe. People have licenses. Folks that deployed vehicles out there took a test. Here we are in 2026, people that are deploying AI never took a test.
They don't have a license to deploy systems that are going to interface with humans to make sure they have the right intent. So one of the first things when you're taking a driver's test is your intentions. Do you understand that this means stop? Do you understand like just basic stuff? We haven't even scratched the surface on basic intent. And so, not stifling the innovation.
No, that's not what we're asking. Hey, do you mean well? Are you deploying this, do you have, what are your intentions for society? Is this for your shareholders for you to be rich? That could potentially compromise society as a whole? We saw that happen in social media. Is that the fate of AI? And that's what people are feeling. They're not feeling the tech.
They're not fearing it from just the tech on its own. And how do you go about teaching virtue to AI? Because see, in my life, I couldn't have been where I am without my father and mother doing all the good things that they did. And whatever they did came as a boomerang in my life. Right. Like people came out of nowhere to try to help me and show me the direction where I need to go.
I call them angels. Right. And angels are nothing more than basically telling you, like, don't veer off a certain destination. Stay on it and let me open the door for you. Right. So how do you bring that human goodness
in technology because all these companies, because I'm an optimization wonk, like, you know, I spend like 25 years of my career building system for Walmart, Coke, PepsiCo and all those guys. And all I focus was how to save a penny more than last year. Right. So if the if the intent is all optimization, where is the line for dignity? How do you understand where is the crossover?
How do you balance it?
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Chapter 7: What are the risks and benefits of AI in society?
I don't sleep enough. So I have a course called the agentic self. My first class begins next Wednesday. And the course starts with self. Because a lot of times when you're in technology, you lose yourself in it. No one ever asks, who am I? The whole premise of the internet sometimes was to be anonymous, where yourself is not important. You want to be something else. And that's cool.
That's good to show up incognito. But the same system that you're showing up to incognito, is smart enough to learn you and knows you more than you know yourself is when you need to start asking, who am I? Because the machine knows you more than you know you. This whole time you've been going on the internet incognito and your cookies are machine has learned.
And the true you that you've been ignoring has now been absorbed and soaked up. And now companies can micro-target you, predict you, and you can't even predict yourself. So in 2020 now, asking and being your full self and owning your data is the most important step that we need to take in this new agentic realm. So we dive into like, you know, the pains that social media has caused.
The students learn the greatest hack. You know, Brittany Kaiser, the whistleblower, she's coming and speaking to our students. Aiden from Cohere is speaking to our students. Reid Hoffman is coming to speak to our students. Prem from Stability AI. We have an awesome cast of folks that are going to mentor and speak to our students as we teach them the basics of agentic systems, building agents.
But then at the same time reminding them the ethics. So they combine their point of view and their point of interest. Stitching beliefs into the agents they build. Stitching concerns into the agents they build so that when they reflect on the agent that is theirs. On a GPU that sits at their home. Right? So it doesn't have to go into some unknown cloud where who's scouring...
all your information. It sits at home. Like your refrigerator. Your refrigerator stores the food you're going to eat. You wouldn't buy a house where you're storing your food next door or somewhere else. You wouldn't buy a house where you have to go take number two or number one down the street. But you do give away the data to the neighbor. But you give away all your stuff to somebody else.
Absolutely. There's not even a data center in the house yet. In 2020 right now, there is your own cloud. Yeah. As far as everyone knowing that, that's like default, like refrigerator is or air conditioning is or plumbing or kitchen and stove. Are we too far past that? Nope. Right now, we're starting off, bro. It's the new JumpJump. Will, tell me about the toy that you're holding in the hand.
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Chapter 8: How can we ensure AI serves humanity positively?
Oh, first off, it's not a toy. It's an agentic AI collectible. I wanted to build a system that was, you know... for the agent itself. So reimagining the OS, instead of AI being a layer on the OS, collaborated very deeply with Qualcomm, where we've reimagined the operating system from the agent and built the product from the agent up. Got it. What does it solve for you?
Oh, so let's think about my digital life, right? There's a lot of noise on email, a lot of incoming calendar requests. whole lot of text messages, DMs, and the MoFo, because it's the operating system, I put the MoFo on my threads that are important, on my emails that are important, and it will help navigate my digital life. using N8N workflows and NCP protocols.
But in this case, because it's the operating system, we don't need to always depend on APIs that are available for the MoFo to connect to because it would use the device the way a human does. It would swipe, click, type, engage. Browse, connect, work with apps and allow apps to be used in a concert way. Because right now, an app works one at a time. Calendar doesn't talk to phone.
Phone doesn't talk to email. in concert so you're trying to create a connected system it's a connected system down at the core so it's a modular omni functional operator so it's an operating system yes at its core but more an operator it doesn't need you to you know swipe through it for it to be functional or tap through it for for it to be functional does it also solve the loneliness problem
Oh, the loneliness, because it's conversational at its core, you know, you converse with the mofo about your digital life. You could talk about because it's, you know, has the power of browsing. It can reason with what's going on in the world and talk about it in a very natural, lifelike human way. What the expression, emotion is.
and because you know it also has like the ability to express itself with facial expressions you know we we say a lot with just how we blink and sad face or not emoji like breaking out of emoji and really having a dynamic um facial expression while you're speaking to the mofo so we have this a agentic rig that we've created for the mofo to be able to express itself. It's fantastic.
It's fantastic. So what other toys do you have here? Well, first off, it's not a toy. It clearly says it on the box. It says it's a toy. I am not a toy. Parental advisory. AI on board. So does it swear? I swear you have to check it out for yourself. So here at CES, I also have a car that I have on display at Fountain Blue. It's a Trinity, fully electric, zero to 60 in under two seconds.
YASA engines on the back wheels, 400 horsepower on each wheel, giving you 800 horsepower in the vehicle. The same type of agentic system is inside the Trinity as well. So the Trinity is called the Trinity because it merges man, machine, and agent. So that's there at the NVIDIA booth here with Qualcomm. Our agentic radio station is there in the Zinger.
That system has been approved with Qualcomm SOC software on chip. And so we're going to scale FYI radio, which is our agentic radio stations where we have agentic host. that go between segments and music. And so, they have that here at Qualcomm, they have this here with Qualcomm, the MoFo, have my LG speaker bags, the boom bags at LG's booth, and then my Trinity over at NVIDIA's booth.
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