will.i.am's course at ASU instructed 75 students on creating AI agents, coinciding with the tech sector laying off 73,000 employees in a span of four months.

      The technology sector dismissed over 73,000 employees in the first four months of 2026. Inside a classroom at a Hollywood recording studio, a 51-year-old hip-hop artist was teaching 75 college students how to create the AI agents that threaten their jobs.

      will.i.am, whose real name is William Adams, is the co-founder of the Black Eyed Peas and the founder of the AI firm FYI.AI. He has dedicated the past sixteen weeks to co-teach an artificial intelligence course at Arizona State University (ASU) titled "The Agentic Self."

      The course, which concluded in late April, was divided between his Los Angeles office and ASU’s main campus in Tempe. Students learned to develop synthetic voice prompts, create personalized AI agents, and apply concepts of agentic AI to real-world issues. Guest speakers included Nick Turley, the head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, and Richard Kerris, Nvidia's general manager for media and entertainment.

      The course focuses on the idea that young individuals, especially those from marginalized communities, should proactively engage with AI rather than passively experience its impact.

      will.i.am emphasized, “There’s a generation of folks who are like, why do I need to go to school? I just got debt and a diploma with no jobs. We are on a mission to change that narrative.”

      "The Agentic Self" is part of ASU's GAME School, and will.i.am holds the position of Professor of Practice. The 75 students varied in age from 18 to 70. Throughout sixteen sessions, they advanced from foundational prompt engineering to constructing functional AI agents designed for specific applications.

      The projects produced by the students were practical rather than theoretical. Claudia Beaton created Aki, an application aimed at street and beach vendors in Brazil, utilizing AI to enhance their business operations. Although she had been working on the app prior to the course, the AI aspect was influenced by her classroom experience. Other students developed AI agents to aid military veterans in managing their benefits and tools for learning African languages.

      The name of the course is intentional. The tech industry has shifted into what Google referred to at its Cloud Next conference as the "agentic era," a period where AI systems operate autonomously for users instead of merely responding to inquiries.

      Google has rebranded its Vertex AI platform as the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. Salesforce, Microsoft, and every major enterprise software firm have unveiled tools for creating agents. The concept of an AI agent has transitioned from research abstraction to corporate marketing pitch in less than two years.

      will.i.am's goal is to teach non-engineers to engage in this transition, rather than be displaced by it. The students are not learning to develop enterprise middleware; they are being trained to instruct AI systems to perform tasks that are relevant to their communities.

      The entrepreneur

      will.i.am’s foray into technology began more than a decade before the current AI trend. He became Intel’s Director of Creative Innovation in 2011 and launched i.am+, a consumer technology firm, in 2013. The company acquired the smart home start-up Wink and the sensor company Sensiya, releasing the Puls smartwatch in 2014 and the XUPERMASK smart face mask with Honeywell in 2021.

      His track record is mixed, as the Puls smartwatch faced significant criticism and was quietly discontinued. The XUPERMASK, a $299 device featuring HEPA filtration, noise-cancelling audio, and LED lights, arrived late in the pandemic and did not reach commercial success. i.am+ made several pivots before settling on its current AI focus.

      FYI.AI, the company that will.i.am now leads, launched in 2023 as a creative collaboration tool powered by AI. It has since diversified into RAiDiO.FYI, an interactive AI radio platform, and EDU.FYI, an education-focused initiative developed in collaboration with ASU. He has reportedly invested in OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, and Runway, and completed Harvard Business School’s Owner/President Management program in 2024.

      Venture capital firms are raising billions based on returns from AI companies like Anthropic, positioning will.i.am as both a practitioner and a financial beneficiary of the technology he is educating students about. This dual role is notable, as he is not an impartial educator but a stakeholder in the ecosystem he is promoting.

      The context

      Meta laid off 8,000 workers in May alone as part of an AI-driven restructuring characterized by a move towards technical roles and automated workflows. Across the industry, 73,000 jobs were cut at 95 companies in the first four months of the year. The trend is consistent: companies are investing in AI capabilities while reducing their workforce, framing layoffs as a realignment towards AI-native skills rather than a net loss of opportunities.

      will.i.am asserted at the Mil