Will.i.am Bridges Pop Culture and AI Education at Arizona State University

Will.i.am — the co-founder of the Black Eyed Peas — began teaching a three-hour, weekly class at Arizona State University in early 2026. The course, titled “Agentic AI,” enrolls roughly 80 undergraduate and graduate students who each develop an autonomous AI agent capable of performing tasks without a human prompt. Lectures are delivered both in-person at a theater the artist built in Los Angeles and via live stream to the ASU campus.

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Born William Adams in 1975, the Los Angeles-raised musician experimented with a cassette-tape-powered Teddy Ruxpin toy at age 12, recording rap loops over his sister’s “Barbie and the Rockers” tape. He later linked that early hack to “MÖFO” (Modular Omni Function Operator), an AI-agent-powered teddy bear showcased at the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show in partnership with Qualcomm. Will.i.am frames the device as a productivity and learning tool whose friendly exterior “humanizes AI.”

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Beyond MÖFO, the artist holds equity in Anthropic, OpenAI, and the AI-music platform Udio. Corporate collaborations include Apple, Intel, and Nvidia. Intel’s former chief marketing officer Deborah Conrad hired him in 2011 as Director of Creative Innovation, describing him as “a great brand ambassador.”

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• 1975 – Birth in Los Angeles.

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• 2009 – Writes lyric “I’m so 3008. You’re so 2000 and late” for the Black Eyed Peas.

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• 2011 – Joins Intel as Director of Creative Innovation.

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• 2024 – Co-founds Beats Electronics; sold to Apple in 2014.

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• 2026 (Jan) – Debuts MÖFO at CES.

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• 2026 (Apr) – Launches ASU “Agentic AI” class.

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Undergraduate Ren Flint notes the instructor “breaks AI down and makes it accessible to everyone.” Graduate student Luke Azariah adds, “This guy is future-proofing a lot of us.”

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Will.i.am emphasizes that “hyper-creativity” is essential for humans to remain competitive with AI, and he stresses the need for “ethics and accountability” in his curriculum. ASU officials describe the program as a pilot effort to embed AI literacy across disciplines.

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Tech journalist Brian Merchant observes that “the line between passion for technology … and just expanding his market portfolio … gets pretty blurry.” He cautions that the artist’s dual role as educator and investor may complicate objective oversight.

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• Enrollment: ~80 students.

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• Class length: 3 hours per week.

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• Investments: Anthropic, OpenAI, Udio.

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• Corporate partners: Apple, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm.

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The course aims to equip a generation with practical AI-building skills, potentially reshaping the talent pipeline for tech-driven industries. By integrating ethical discussions, it also seeks to temper the broader cultural backlash against unchecked AI deployment.

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Will.i.am acknowledges that “it’s too early to tell if MÖFO will take off,” reflecting uncertainty about market adoption and long-term educational outcomes.

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• “You are a company, Dave. You're not just like a creative dude,” — Will.i.am, Instructor

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• “My sister was pissed,” — Will.i.am, recalling childhood experiment

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• “You've seen how corporate agents are used. You've seen what happens with no guardrails.” — Video warning shown in class

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• “He was a great brand ambassador,” — Deborah Conrad, former CMO, Intel

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• “That line between passion for technology, passion for the idea that it could make people's lives better, and just expanding his market portfolio and his salience as a pop cultural icon, gets pretty blurry in there,” — Brian Merchant, tech journalist

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Will.i.am plans to teach a second semester at ASU, expand MÖFO’s functionality, and develop an AI-agent-integrated automobile prototype. Continued collaborations with corporate partners suggest further integration of AI tools into both educational and consumer contexts.

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