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Earlier this month, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was met with jeers when he brought up AI during his commencement speech at the University of Arizona. Just days earlier, footage of real estate executive Gloria Caulfield being booed at her commencement speech at the University of Central Florida after mentioning AI went viral online.
“What happened?” Caulfield asked the raucous crowd, incredulous. “OK, I struck a chord! May I finish?”
Apart from a complete failure to read the room, the two incidents perfectly highlight massively growing backlash to the controversial tech, with millions of students who are about to enter the workforce becoming fed up of executives celebrating AI and prioritizing investments in the tech that often come at the cost of creating new jobs.
Seemingly tapping into these widespread frustrations, “The Daily Show” host and standup comedian Ronny Chieng sang a dramatically different tune during a profanity-laden commencement speech at Harvard’s Class Day event this week.
“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.”
“I’m here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI,” he told a far more receptive crowd.
Chieng addressed ongoing concerns that AI may lead to atrophying skills, particularly among students, and a broader phenomenon experts have come to call “cognitive surrender,” in which users abandon their own reasoning to adopt the views of an AI model as their own.
“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,” Chieng said. “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,” he added jokingly. “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.”
To many, Chieng’s speech will likely come as a breath of fresh air. Young people, faced with dire post-graduation job prospects, are continuing to turn against AI in incredible ways, from refusing to use it at work to even intentionally undermining their bosses’ AI initiatives.
University students across the country are starting to speak out, arguing that the tech is being hoisted on them against their will while undermining the role of human agency and creativity in society.
Put simply, they refuse to be replaced by machines as executives continue to celebrate AI as the next industrial revolution.
Chieng’s speech took on a more philosophical turn towards the end.
“Creating is the fun part,” he said. “Why would I want AI to take that away from me?”
More on AI backlash: There Are Signs of a Massive AI Backlash
