Creative artist and tech founder will.i.am says AI needs regulation and governance so it doesn’t replace people and jobs.
While will.i.am is perhaps best known as the frontman for the Black Eyes Peas and producer for some of the world’s greatest artists, including Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber and Brittney Spears, he is also a tech entrepreneur and has advised, invested and developed a number of companies including Beats Electronics which was sold to Apple for $US3bn in 2014.
Today he is collaborating with LG to craft and tune the xboom speaker range.
And he’s not just putting his face to the brand – he has a hands-on role to assist with the design, architecture and software for the speakers as well.
will.i.am also uses AI to tune the speakers so they sound just as good out in the world as they would in a studio.
“AI is great – it’s great for photos, it’s great for generating images, AI is great for calibrating sound,” he told Tech Guide.
“There was no such thing as calibrating sound three years ago, if you did you had to bring a team of people in there to tune the speaker to the room – it would cost a whole of money so in that case AI has done a great job.”
But the artist and tech-savvy entrepreneur says there some areas of AI that need attention.
“There are some concerns on AI when it comes to no regulation, no governance and AI replacing people and work.”
“I am now a professor at ASU teaching an agentic course for folks who will be building agents.
“How do you encourage and instil ethics and personal agent building especially when we’re in a self-regulated self-governed realm at the moment.
“I am an AI enthusiast, of building agents but I build them with a moral compass.”
* Stephen Fenech travelled to Las Vegas for CES with support from Samsung, Hisense, LG, ASUS, Ecovacs, Roborock, Reolink and Lego.
