Joel Yi has spent the past few years building DeployAIBots into a company that installs artificial intelligence inside businesses. He is also building something with a different kind of return. Through a nonprofit effort focused on AI education in Southeast Asia, Joel Yi is working to give young adults the tools to understand and use the technology that he believes will define the coming decade.
The initiative, which Joel Yi describes as the DeployAIBots Academy, grows out of a conviction that artificial intelligence is about to widen an already significant gap. As he sees it, the divide will not be driven primarily by raw talent or intelligence. It will be driven by experience and access. People who learn to work with AI systems early will operate on a different level from those who never get the chance, and the distance between the two groups will only grow as the technology advances.
That concern is personal for Joel Yi. Originally from Malaysia, he moved to the United States as a teenager and went on to study computer science, earn recognition for his work in artificial intelligence at Pacific Lutheran University, and serve as one of the first cyber officers in the United States Army cyber branch. He knows what it feels like to hold potential without a clear way to use it, and he has spoken about how quickly a person’s path can change once the right opportunity appears. The academy is his attempt to manufacture that opportunity for others.
The teaching approach reflects how Joel Yi thinks about artificial intelligence in general. He is not interested in producing students who can only describe what AI is. The academy is built so that young adults do more than learn about AI systems. They build them and use them. For Joel Yi, that distinction matters as much in education as it does in business. Just as he criticizes companies that experiment with AI without ever putting it to work, he wants students to gain practical, hands on command of the technology rather than a theoretical familiarity with it.
Underneath the program is the same idea that drives his company. Joel Yi describes artificial intelligence as leverage, a multiplier on what a single person can accomplish. He argues that giving someone the right tools early does not simply teach a skill. It changes how they think, how they work, and what they believe is possible for themselves. By that logic, AI education is one of the highest leverage gifts a young person can receive, because it reshapes their sense of what they can achieve rather than merely adding a line to a resume.
Joel Yi frames the choice of Southeast Asia as both a return to his roots and a recognition of where the need is sharp. The region is full of young people with ability and ambition who may lack the structured exposure to artificial intelligence that is becoming more common in established technology centers. By bringing real training to that audience, Joel Yi hopes to ensure that the next wave of AI fluency is not concentrated only in the wealthiest markets.
He is clear eyed about the scale of the challenge. Teaching practical AI skills is harder than handing out information, and the technology is moving quickly enough that any curriculum has to stay current. But Joel Yi treats that difficulty as part of the point. The students who learn to keep pace with a fast moving field gain not just knowledge but adaptability, which he considers one of the most valuable traits in an AI driven economy.
The academy also connects to Joel Yi’s broader vision for DeployAIBots and his role in the field. He sees himself as someone advancing access to artificial intelligence on two fronts at once, helping companies put it to work and helping individuals learn to wield it. The two efforts share a single belief, that the value of AI is realized only when people and organizations actually use it.
For Joel Yi, the measure of success is not how many students can recite definitions. It is how many leave the academy able to build and deploy real systems, carrying with them a changed sense of what they are capable of. That, he suggests, is leverage in its most human form.
