Investor and musician will.i.am: Generative AI is 'a job creator' and will help avoid mediocrity
CANNES, France — Musician, futurist, and well-connected investor will.i.am suggested the talk about generative AI crushing jobs may be on the overdone side.
In his eyes, working closely with the new tech may prove to be job enhancing over time.
"If you are a creator and you see this tool, then it's a job creator," the entrepreneur told Yahoo Finance Live at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity on Monday. "If you are tied to yesterday and just comfortable with mediocrity, then it's a job [destroyer]."
The debate on how AI will shape the jobs of the future and the economy remains a hot topic in markets and economists' circles.
A positive spin on the impact comes out of a new McKinsey study last week. The study identified 63 generative AI use cases spanning 16 business functions that could unleash between $2.6 trillion and $4.4 trillion in economic benefits annually.
However, dark cloud takes aren't hard to find either.
OpenAI's chief operating officer Brad Lightcap told a crowd at a WSJ Cannes event on Monday that AI could be a job eliminator.
"Every large company has an army of people that read and review contracts for revenue recognition purposes, for example," Lightcap said at the gathering. "You may not have that job. That may not be a job of the future."
Goldman Sachs recently estimated that generative AI could expose the equivalent of 300 million jobs globally to automation over the next decade. That's a nice way of saying a person may lose their job to a robot.
"What I love about it [generative AI] is that everyone now has the ability to create, because now you have a partner to be able to push it," will.i.am added. "It's not just for songs. It's not just for poetry. It's not just for writing emails. It's not just for marketing strategies. Use it to solve problems, and then by that problem that you solve, it will create jobs."
Will.i.am's FYI, IBM team up on AI
Born William Adams in Los Angeles in 1975, the naturally curious will.i.am didn't exactly run in tech circles. But today, will.i.am is using his investing acumen, brand, and access to top tech leaders such as Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff to invest in new AI ventures.
He rose to fame in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a member of the Black Eyed Peas, a band that has sold more than 58 million singles worldwide. The group is still putting out music, minus longtime front-person Fergie, who has retired to spend more time with her family.
Will.i.am was an early investor in headphone maker Beats, netting him an undisclosed amount when Apple (AAPL) purchased the company for $3 billion in 2014, and he also struck a partnership deal with Intel (INTC) to promote various hardware.
His latest venture is a generative AI messaging and video creation app called FYI. At Cannes, will.i.am revealed a new tie-up with IBM that will weave Watsonx AI technology into the FYI platform.
The musician-turned-businessman thinks global businesses are on the cusp of radical transformation in the next decade at the hands of AI.
"There's still a lot of folks that don't understand how it's going to transform everything," the investor added.
Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn. Tips on the banking crisis? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com
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