Various business stiffs wheeled out lately to tell graduates to "deal" with AI were surprised to find themselves booed and jeered. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, private equity strategist Gloria Caulfield and music exec Scott Borchetta didn't get the memo. The Daily Show's Ronny Chieng, however, knew exactly what to say to please the crowd at Harvard Class Day.
"Can I just say f*** AI, f*** AI, f*** AI?" Chieng said, triggering rapturous applause. "I'm glad you agree. It's so stupid. A lot of other respected graduation speakers at colleges around America are talking about you guys needing to master AI for the future."
Here's the video, and the cheerin'.
The speech wasn't mere invective: he talked of how dependence on LLMs leads to deskilling and cognitive surrender.
"I know someone sitting out here right now who is saying, 'What about the use of AI to pioneer breakthroughs in medicine and physics?'… If you're using it for that purpose, you're not the problem. "I'm talking about the accumulation of cognitive debt due to excessive use of large language models… This is why you should be scared of AI.
"Your generation's upcoming battle won't be humans against AI; that's at least two months away [laughs] It's going to be people with substance versus people with shallow knowledge. It's going to be mastery versus faking it. It's going to be people with good taste versus tacky."
It's even ruined the fun of cheating, he said.
Chieng's not the only graduation speaker to get a good response suggesting young people not surrender their futures to big tech. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak won cheers with a simple redefinition during a commencement speech at Grand Valley State University in Michigan: "you have actual intelligence."
