AI Needs Intention, Not Fear | will.i.am on Leadership, Creativity & the Future of Artificial Intelligence

**Shekhar Natarajan** (0:45)
It's an honor to be here. We are at the CES show, shooting for Tomorrow Today and CNBC. Thank you, Will.

**will.i.am** (0:50)
Thank you. So I'm just like a enthusiast, a tinker, a thinker, a ideator, manifestor, you know? I love making stuff.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (1:02)
I know that you had a very humble beginning. You used to take a bus, like a yellow bus, from East Brentwood. No, East LA to Brentwood.
East LA 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?

**will.i.am** (1:32)
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? What are we doing wrong? But it wasn't until I met a Persian family, Mishreef, 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 work 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, and 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 want to build an awesome company, you got to hire the right people. You want to have a freaking awesome team that wins the Super Bowl, you got to have the right players. You want to go from a nightmare and dream, and the manifested dream to change the reality, you 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.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (3:43)
Absolutely. So you're saying that poverty is your origin story, not like your identity.

**will.i.am** (3:51)
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, 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 don't 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, a college prep. I've sent hundreds of kids to school with my IM scholarship and now I want to like take it to the next level. Let's build a vehicle. Like I know that's audacious.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (5:34)
But you got to have intent.

**will.i.am** (5:35)
I remember back in the day when you would say, wow, this is made in China.

**Shekhar Natarajan** (5:41)
Back in the day, that was made in Pakistan.

**will.i.am** (5:44)
That's a nice jugger. Pakistan in the house. That's nice.

**SPEAKER_4** (5:47)
But I'm from India.

**will.i.am** (5:49)
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 is older than the UAE.