ASU Students Develop Advanced AI Personas in New Will.i.am Course
ASU students are building advanced AI personas in a new class led by will.i.am. Third-year computer science student Dhruv Patel created an “agentic self” that mirrors his voice, values and goals. Students aim to make agents that think like their creators while using machine-scale capabilities.
Course structure and partnership
The class is titled “The Agentic Self.” Nearly 80 students from varied majors and age groups attend in Tempe and Los Angeles. Will.i.am teaches as a professor of practice in The GAME School while alternating between campuses.
The course uses EDU.FYI, a platform developed by FYI.AI in collaboration with Arizona State University. The program is a test case for broader rollout to all ASU faculty and students and, eventually, other schools. Will.i.am founded FYI.AI, which is headquartered in Los Angeles.
How the agents work
Unlike public large language models, these agents keep data private and remain owned by the student creators. The systems can reason, adapt and complete complex workflows with minimal input. Students design agents to reflect their authors’ intentions, voices and goals.
EDU.FYI runs on hardware powered by Nvidia. Nvidia donated 80 graphics processing units for student use. The devices are compact and designed to keep content off the public cloud.
Faculty and facilitators
Will.i.am leads the course with three ASU facilitators. Peter Murrieta, an Emmy-winning producer, helps guide the curriculum. Sean Hobson and Pavan Turaga also support instruction and platform integration.
The course combines creative practice with technical training. Will.i.am alternates weekly between a Los Angeles studio classroom and ASU’s Tempe campus to engage both cohorts.
Ethics, ownership and learning
Ethical design is central to the curriculum. Students discuss what personal data to share and how agents might reflect their creators’ biases. The class asks participants to define core values they would hardwire into their agents.
ASU President Michael Crow visited as a guest lecturer. He urged students to build empathy into their systems. The university also expanded an OpenAI partnership in 2024 to make ChatGPT Edu with GPT-5 available to the campus community.
Student perspectives
Dhruv Patel said he wanted an agent that can riff with him and help generate ideas. He enrolled immediately after the course opened. Patel is also a musician and praised will.i.am’s creative approach to teaching the technology.
Jeremiah Holland, a graduate student in Narrative and Emerging Media in Los Angeles, noted that the class gives students control over their data. He previously earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Sidney Poitier New American Film School.
Classroom format and resources
Half the students meet will.i.am in person each week. The other half join by live stream. The Los Angeles cohort meets in a purpose-built classroom inside will.i.am’s studio.
Future plans
The course will return in future semesters. EDU.FYI remains slated for wider availability across ASU and potentially other institutions. Organizers say the aim is to equip students with tools to use AI responsibly and creatively.
Report for Filmogaz.com.
