will.i.am's course at ASU instructed 75 students on how to create AI agents, coinciding with the tech sector laying off 73,000 employees in just four months.

      The tech sector let go of 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 instructing 75 college students on how to create the AI agents that are taking their places.

      will.i.am, whose real name is William Adams and who co-founded the Black Eyed Peas, has spent the last sixteen weeks co-teaching an artificial intelligence course at Arizona State University entitled “The Agentic Self.” The course, which concluded in late April, had students situated between his Los Angeles office and ASU’s main campus in Tempe. They learned how to create synthetic voice prompts, develop personalized AI agents, and apply agentic AI principles 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's premise is that young individuals, especially those from underrepresented communities, should not wait for AI to affect them; instead, they should learn how to build it. “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,” said will.i.am. “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. Over sixteen class sessions, they advanced from basic prompt engineering to constructing functional AI agents designed for specific applications.

      The projects created by the students were more applicable than academic. Claudia Beaton built Aki, an application for street and beach vendors in Brazil that utilizes AI to enhance their businesses. She was working on this app prior to the course but credited the AI aspect to what she learned in class. Other students developed agents to assist military veterans with navigating their benefits and tools for learning African languages.

      The course title is intentional. The tech industry has entered what Google described as the "agentic era" at its Cloud Next conference, a time when AI systems operate autonomously for users rather than merely responding to inquiries. Google rebranded its Vertex AI platform as the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. Salesforce, Microsoft, and all major enterprise software firms have introduced tools to build agents. The idea of an AI agent has transitioned from a research concept to corporate marketing in less than two years.

      What will.i.am is doing is empowering non-engineers to engage in this transition rather than be left behind by it. The students are not learning to construct enterprise middleware; they are being taught to direct AI systems to complete tasks that are relevant to their communities.

      will.i.am's technology career began over a decade before the current AI boom. In 2011, he became Intel’s Director of Creative Innovation. He founded i.am+, a consumer technology company, in 2013. The company acquired smart home startup Wink and sensor firm Sensiya, launching the Puls smartwatch in 2014 and the XUPERMASK smart face mask with Honeywell in 2021.

      His track record has been mixed, with the Puls smartwatch receiving widespread criticism and being quietly discontinued. The XUPERMASK, priced at $299 and featuring HEPA filtration, noise-canceling audio, and LED lights, debuted late in the pandemic without achieving significant commercial success. i.am+ has shifted focus multiple times before settling on AI.

      FYI.AI, which will.i.am currently leads, was launched in 2023 as an AI-powered creative collaboration tool. It has since branched out into RAiDiO.FYI, an interactive AI radio platform, and EDU.FYI, an education-focused division established in partnership with ASU. He has reportedly invested in OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, and Runway, and finished 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 financial stakeholder in the technology he is teaching students to use. This dual role is significant; he is not merely an impartial educator but a participant in the ecosystem he is promoting.

      In context, Meta laid off 8,000 workers in May alone as part of an AI-centered restructuring that the company characterized as a transition toward technical roles and automated workflows. Overall, 73,000 jobs were cut across 95 companies in the initial months of the year. The trend is clear: companies are investing in AI while downsizing, framing the layoffs as a shift toward AI-related skills rather than an overall decrease in job opportunities.

      will.i.am argues that AI will generate new opportunities for people in underserved communities instead of posing a threat. “That is the world we’re trying to build, trying to empower those who have been ignored and invisible,”