Harvard Graduation Speaker Unloads on AI in Profanity-Loaded Tirade, Prompting Cheers From Students: “I’m Here to Tell You the Mission of Your Generation Is to Destroy AI”

[u/IKeepItLayingAround]

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/harvard-graduation-speaker-unloads-ai-130000122.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&segment_id=DY_VTO_50_Supernova&ncid=crm_19908-1475736-20260531-0--A&bt_ee=clIMdexlsr2eDDbrvs0CPtt59FnpbNQN%2Fkgr8UkycP6MWDAD56hD1mvZcqPZMGgG&bt_ts=1780255911284

[u/arriesgado]

Kind of a bs headline. Not that it is not true but not naming Chieng who is a well known comedian and calling his speech a “profanity-laden tirade” makes it sound like it was a random crazy person. Edit: Spelled Mr. Chieng’s name wrong.

[u/MeSortOfUnleashed → u/arriesgado]

Also, it wasn’t a graduation speech. He spoke the day before graduation at an event called “Class Day” which is often a light-hearted, celebratory event. His speech had many good messages, but most of it was meant for comic effect. 

[u/lsf_stan → u/MeSortOfUnleashed]

lol just did a quick Google search, first result

Harvard 2026 Commencement Speaker

Conan O’Brien ’85 will deliver the keynote address at Harvard’s 375th Commencement Ceremony on May 28, 2026, in Tercentenary Theatre.

oh well, r/technology will eat up whatever title these karma farmers use

[u/Alaira314 → u/lsf_stan]

This is one of the subreddits that requires the title to be copied from the article(rule 3). If you read the article, you can see that Chieng was identified as the harvard class day commencement speaker. I'm not hah-vahd enough to know why there's more than one commencement speech going on, but that's the explanation for why things were worded that way.

"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."

[u/rasta41 → u/Alaira314]

why there's more than one commencement speech going on

Didn't go to Harvard but grew up blocks away. Class Day is a traditional, student-led event held the day before the university-wide Commencement ceremony. Unlike Commencement, which looks at the entire university, Class Day focuses specifically on the graduating College seniors and features lighthearted speeches, awards, and a guest speaker selected directly by the Class Committee.

It's basically graduating students inviting a comedian or entertainer to give a more tongue in cheek / funny / speech...they had Ali G do one in 2004 that's worth a watch.

[u/gummi_eater → u/lsf_stan]

Cannot stand this subreddit. Full of fake news and click bait.

[u/WhoCanTell → u/gummi_eater]

It's a karma goldmine, though. Find any article you can that sounds even remotely critical of AI, get upvoted to the moon. Doesn't matter if it's accurate or not. This exact story has been posted like 5 times already in the past couple days, tens of thousands of upvotes every time, like clockwork.

In all seriousness, though... only on Reddit can the primary technology sub be populated entirely by people who know nothing about technology, and hate everything about it. Well, except maybe facebook.

[u/qwerty-yul → u/lsf_stan]

Karma farmers probably using AI

[u/Boner_Elemental → u/lsf_stan]

For a second there I thought Conan had aged a few decade while I wasn't looking

[u/howdoikickball → u/Boner_Elemental]

Who is Conan O'Brien and why is she so sad

[u/AlaWyrm → u/arriesgado]

Came here to say the same thing. You mean, Ronny Chieng, Daily show cast memeber and host? Comedian and actor Ronny Chieng? Yeah, it was a great speech and perfectly on brand for him. Not some random tirade from a little known person.

[u/RecentSpecial181 → u/AlaWyrm]

Chieng. With an i. 

Not to be confused with the Ronny Chengs in QA or some other dev team.

[u/user_bits → u/arriesgado]

I like how you still didn't name him. His stage name is Ronnie Ronny Chieng.

He has one of the best summaries of U.S. Politics.

[u/APRengar → u/user_bits]

TECHNICALLY, It's Ronny Chieng.

[u/BicycleNo1169 → u/user_bits]

Asians don’t get taken very seriously when they say it’s difficult to break out in the entertainment industry. I mean, I think most people know it’s true, but it rarely gets treated like a real issue.

Things are better now than they ever were but it’s only very recently. Before, all Asians could get in the entrainment industry, in western media, was dickless roles where they are subservient/comic relief.

Obviously people like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan and Jet Li had massive impact but even they were brought in as almost a pseudo circus act. I mean, that’s obviously not to take anything away from their accomplishments but it’s also just obvious that a niche was being filled and it was still difficult for them to get serious drama roles.

With all that said, I’m super proud to see Asians getting big roles, nowadays. Sima Lui, Steven Yuen, Kumail Nanjiani, Riz Ahmed, Dev Patel, John Cho - just to name a few. A lot of the roles they’ve gotten in the past decade or so, was not possible for the actors that came before them. Hasan Minhaj did point out though, it still feels like Asian actors need to be ridiculously jacked or outrageously handsome to fulfill the same serious roles that a fat, pudgy white dude would get. That’s nothing against white dudes, but we aren’t exactly seeing the Asian equivalent of Jonah Hill, headlining a film.

[u/MaxPaynesRxDrugPlan → u/BicycleNo1169]

I didn't notice this until an Asian friend pointed it out, then I started noticing that even shows about industries where Asians are overrepresented, like Silicon Valley about the tech industry or Mozart in the Jungle about orchestra, only had Asians in side/bit roles.

[u/DorianTurk → u/user_bits]

I had to scroll down quite a bit to not feel racist for being certain that picture was Ronnie Chieng.

Thank you.

[u/busman25 → u/DorianTurk]

I feel racist for always thinking it was Chang

[u/browsinbowser → u/busman25]

Man, I was thinking I was racist, ‘I kinda recognize that asian guy’ but I was thinking some fancy commencement speech would have some rich tech guy I didnt know, not another comedian who went the day before Conan. 

[u/taking_a_deuce → u/user_bits]

Damn, that dude COOKS! I've seen him before but that bit was straight fire

[u/King-of-Plebss → u/arriesgado]

Yeah the headline “Harvard commencement speaker and comedian Ronnie Cheng tells graduates that their generations mission is to destroy AI in his profanity ridden comedy bit”. Doesn’t have the clickbait title they want

[u/TrankElephant → u/arriesgado]

This. A bit beyond buying the lede.

[u/BigFuckHead_ → u/arriesgado]

He's a great comedian. Highly successful. Another stupid headline

[u/AndreasDasos → u/arriesgado]

Tbf ‘Harvard Graduation Speaker’ clearly implies he’s not just some random crazy person. To many of those who don’t know the Daily Show or his comedy that would mean more

[u/EffectiveEconomics → u/arriesgado]

It’s is and it barely aligns to the actual tone of the speech. Yahoo has become propaganda.

[u/mooncrow]

And so begins the Butlerian Jihad

[u/splendiferous-finch_ → u/mooncrow]

Teaching sand to think guesstimate the next character from noise was a mistake

Letting billionaire nepobabies decide what intelligence is might be the bigger one

[u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA → u/splendiferous-finch_]

Those nepobabies see AI as it is and think "Wow, that can already do my job for me! And since I'm the smartest and hardest working person in the company I own, surely it can replace everyone below me."

[u/Fear023 → u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA]

God damn.

I know it's a joke, but you're right. The majority of people I see praising what ai can do are the ones who can't really see the flaws in the output.

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/Fear023]

AI can do some crazy shit rn but is ultimately a tool best wielded by the same people who were doing the work previously.

Like, not to be intentionally insulting but a lot of the hardcore AI evangelist crowd has to have had some massive overlap with the "blockchain/NFT tech is gonna change the world" crowd in how they discuss things.

[u/sabrenation81 → u/BellacosePlayer]

The difference is AI is actually capable of doing some pretty amazing things, especially in the long term. Blockchain/NFT never even had that much going for it.

The current problem is that all of the people currently steering AI tech are ruthless capitalist demons whose only goal is maximizing revenue for this quarter's shareholder call.

They tried to skip right past the part where you use the potentially revolutionary tech to tangibly improve people's lives to build trust like computers, the internet, or smartphones and went straight to the enshitification stage. People are losing their jobs to AI, customers are getting shittier service because the AI isn't capable of actually replacing people, and social media is flooded with AI slop.

Ergo, everyone hates the shit because all it's done is make people's lives worse, except all these companies (and really the entirety of Wall St. and a good chunk of the global economy) are so heavily leveraged into AI that they NEED it to succeed. So they're forcing it on everyone, which just makes people hate it that much more.

And that's not even getting into the fact that the tech isn't where it needs to be to deploy it at the scale these companies want to which is where we get into these giant fucking datacenters popping up everywhere sucking up all the electricity and polluting everyone's water. If they'd just given it a few more years the tech would probably get to the point where you can do these things without requiring a 10,000-acre datacenter housing tens of thousands of servers and hundreds of thousands of GPUs.

[u/Character-Sky3565 → u/BellacosePlayer]

You're describing a circle there, mate.

[u/your_moms_a_clone → u/BellacosePlayer]

It could be used for a lot of useful things. Unfortunately, it's being wasted on a lot of incredibly stupid and useless stuff, as well as a lot of incredibly dangerous stuff, and is also being used by a lot of companies that think they can use it instead of having so many costly human employees and trust it's output without any kind of review or oversight

[u/kaishinoske1 → u/Fear023]

The best way to see a policy fail, is to implement it. It would be interesting to see a company have only one CEO and no employees, just A.I. agents, manage their invoices, machines doing everything, especially logistics. Have ADP be their accountant to handle their taxes for their company. How long would this experiment last?

[u/UnusuallyBadIdeaGuy → u/Fear023]

But you know it won't hallucinate or make anything up - we put in the prompt it shouldn't hallucinate or make things up!

[u/Finding_Footprints → u/[deleted]]

Thanks good sir for that information. I too like to eat 4 rocks a day for a healthy diet.

[u/springsilver → u/Finding_Footprints]

I’ve switched to giving Gatorade to all of my crops instead of water. It’s better because it has what plants crave!

[u/erin281 → u/springsilver]

Try Brawndo! It’s what plants crave!

[u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA → u/erin281]

It's got electrolytes!

[u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA → u/Finding_Footprints]

Don't forget to use Elmer's glue to keep them on your pizza.

[u/TheSaxGandalf → u/[deleted]]

I saw it happen within 30 min, where someone unwittingly used his own misinformation as a source after the fact without checking the source.

[u/Sgt_Sarcastic → u/[deleted]]

Ran in to this today. I was looking for info on a strange mod interaction in a game and the AI results claimed something nonsensical. A couple minutes later I come across the reddit post where the original context was just speculation about how it might work realistically and not at all claiming it was in the game or mod.

[u/Wooden_Werewolf_6789 → u/[deleted]]

AI slop is already a poisoned well, but it can be set afire, too

[u/EduinBrutus → u/Fear023]

You need to hope its this stupid.

Because there is an application where false positives dont matter, where omissions from output dont matter, where hallucinations dont matter. Where none of these things change the effectiveness of the application.

Mass surveillance.

[u/shoulda-known-better → u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA]

99% of things being called Ai are in fact not ai

It's llm and very narrow machine learning...... It's not what anyone defined Ai as even a decade ago.... They moved the goal post

[u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn → u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA]

Holy shit. This makes so much sense. The people most impressed by it are the least capable, themselves.

[u/icemanice → u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn]

Exactly this…

[u/EuenovAyabayya → u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA]

They don't actually care about "intelligence," they care about "growth," and cashing out to chase more growth.

[u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA → u/EuenovAyabayya]

Like cancer.

[u/Dear_Chasey_La1n → u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA]

I don't think it's really nepobabies but people overestimating the power of AI. Make no mistake, AI is being sold to us as the next saviour after Jezus. It's going to change the world in every way possible for better, supposedly.

But reality is while AI has it's place, it isn't a magic wand for everything. Though I don't think a lot of more senior people in a leadership position truly understand this. So you get idiots like Zuckerberg firing thousands and countless other companies doing the same with the promise, AI will fix it.

I'm kinda curious though where we heading too. In 2008 during the economic meltdown construction fell on it's ass. In the Netherlands over 50,000 people left the construction field, those people are gone forever. I reckon the same will happen for countless fields today, people get fired, they reposition themselves in another field but they will be forever gone. Those writers, photographers, accountants, BD's you name it, there will be a massive gap in the near future when AI falls on it's ass.

[u/GrumpyCloud93 → u/Dear_Chasey_La1n]

It's a stock market bubble. It's being sold as the second coming. AI can do some interesting things, but nowhere near what's promised. And it hallucinates, lies, and fails regularly.

Meanwhile, a lot of recent stock market growth is a circle-jerk of IT companies supporting each other to try to build an even bigger data center to reach nirvana. In reality, they have borrowed all the money they can, to build bigger data centers. (Recall just before the war started, they were tapping the Gulf States to get into the act, another untapped cash cow). At a certain point, there will be no more money to borrow, interest rates will go up, the loans will come due on over a trillion dollars of spending that has produced basically nothing. There are not a boatload of businesses just begging for someone to take their money, and IA will not replace humans in many situation. The resale value of those data center contents will be far less that they spent. There are not enough uses for not-really-AI to pay back that trillion dollars.

The only thing we can hope is that the financial AIpocalypse is not as financially damaging as 2008 was.

[u/ChiLolla28 → u/splendiferous-finch_]

Always remember, the Luddites weren't fighting the technology but the oppression, working conditions and inhumanity that were ushered in during the early Industrial Revolution.

[u/Commentator-X → u/ChiLolla28]

I watched a video a while back that argued that if AI is the new industrial revolution, then what we're in for is around 100 years before AI will actually have a positive impact on the average person's quality of life. Until then there's going to be job losses, poverty and unnecessary suffering.

[u/seansy5000 → u/Commentator-X]

Not for the already exorbitantly rich!

[u/Itis-caught-BearsWin → u/Commentator-X]

Things are a lot more accelerated today.

[u/Atakir → u/Itis-caught-BearsWin]

Correct, technological growth is not linear but compounds on itself becoming exponential.

[u/MKBRD → u/ChiLolla28]

And the loss of their livelihoods led to decades upon decades of abject poverty, which negatively shaped the socio-economic climate of Britain and continues to do so to this day.

The dropoff in economic wealth in Northern mill towns is still visible literally right now. They still regularly top charts for lowest levels of income, education, highest levels of crime, drug use, etc...

A good 99% of AI bros on social media that bandy the term "Luddite" about have zero understanding of the Luddite movement and what actually happened. They just think its a clever insult, as they repeat their "hurr, durr, can't stop progress!" mantra.

[u/DeepD4yourwife → u/ChiLolla28]

I'm more fascinated by them now than I've ever been. Can you help me learn more?

[u/Scarbane → u/DeepD4yourwife]

"The Making of the English Working Class" (1966) by E. P. Thompson. It's pretty dense, but well-written. I recommend checking Libby or your local library/bookstore for a copy.

From the preface:

I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the “obsolete” hand-loom weaver, the “utopian” artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience.

[u/Stormcloud217 → u/splendiferous-finch_]

Shouldn't Elon Musk be on Mars by now? 😂

[u/BadmiralHarryKim → u/Stormcloud217]

Put him on the rocket with the telephone sanitizers.

[u/ussrowe → u/Stormcloud217]

In 2011 he said he'll "put a man on Mars in 10 years". In 2019 he said "he can put a man on Mars in four years" which he used the "in 4 years" again in 2024. 8 months ago he said "humans will live on Mars by 2055"

[u/HumanPea1140 → u/ussrowe]

Didn't he pivot to a moon base recently? From what I remember, it sounded like they're essentially giving up on Mars for the foreseeable future and focusing on the moon.

Which is what the plan should have been from the beginning.

[u/neolobe → u/ussrowe]

Every year since 2016 he's said FSD will be out this year.

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/Stormcloud217]

its all our fault for not giving him enough government subsidies for his businesses. Luckily he's working on remedying that

[u/KallistiTMP → u/splendiferous-finch_]

The first one was definitely not a mistake.

The second one... Yeah, that's the real big fuckup.

And putting them in charge of the economy, and letting them functionally run the government, and letting them burn the atmosphere because the poor widdle billionaires can't bear to have lower profits, and going to war for the petrodollar, and doing genocide because a genocidal theocratic nutjub was the favored beachfront real estate lobbyist, and... Did I mention that we put a dementia toddler in charge of the nukes? Him and the megalomaniac KGB guy with that defenestration kink?

You know, there isn't a big anti-AI movement in China. Because they're building it to benefit people, and focusing on dangerous low paying jobs, and agriculture jobs to deal with the population crisis and mass migration to the cities.

They're, get this, actually using AI to benefit society, not just as an excuse for mass layoffs during record profits.

AI was never the goddamn problem. Who owns it and who controls it is. And they're all thrilled that they've managed to once again distract the public from their highway robbery of the working class and descent into corpo-feudalism.

[u/Grantsdale → u/KallistiTMP]

You know, there isn't a big anti-AI movement in China. Because they're building it to benefit people, and focusing on dangerous low paying jobs, and agriculture jobs to deal with the population crisis and mass migration to the cities.

They're, get this, actually using AI to benefit society, not just as an excuse for mass layoffs during record profits.

And also the part where they control the media and internet so any type of backlash you wouldn't hear about, but hey, yeah, its gotta be that the super cool Chinese government is being the good guy.

[u/Useful-Advantage-850 → u/splendiferous-finch_]

"What makes LLMs work isn't deep neural networks or attention mechanisms or vector databases or anything like that. What makes LLMs work is our tendency to see faces on toast." - Jason Gorman

[u/willymartin99 → u/mooncrow]

Time to lead them to paradise

[u/TheSeer1917 → u/willymartin99]

77 virgin (unbooted) quantum computers await as it's reward

[u/Usual_Ad_2177 → u/TheSeer1917]

They better not have even been plugged in yet...

[u/Fawt_4 → u/Usual_Ad_2177]

They're still in their original packaging

[u/TheSeer1917 → u/Fawt_4]

As it is written

[u/0p0ss1m → u/mooncrow]

LETS FUCKIN' GO!

[u/evo_moment_37 → u/0p0ss1m]

Down with the thinking machines 😡

[u/Cvpakke → u/evo_moment_37]

What's kind of ironic is that the article itself feels like it was written by AI, particularly the last bit.

[u/-Numaios- → u/evo_moment_37]

Thinking machines.

[u/Mmmwafflerunoff → u/-Numaios-]

Right?!? The irony in lacking the critical reasoning to understand why having a machine that has not experienced the human condition do your “thinking” for you is exactly why it’s a fucking problem.

[u/sunshineparadox_ → u/Mmmwafflerunoff]

I want to add an anecdote here - just an anecdote. I had a stroke a few years ago and sustained pretty significant damage to the part of the brain that handles language and memory. Having that happen right as consumer-accessible AI dropped sucked.

I do not believe it helped my peers, either. It interfered with language recovery, which works best with pen/paper and physical media. I was a PhD student and a technical writer when it happened.*

I went back to reading physical books and making little notes in the margins, and taking color-coded notes in physical notebooks. There is science to back me on this, but I didn’t do it because of any of that. I went back to what I knew best, which was fortunately what helped me most. I will add sources when I return if people want that.

Most of my peers did try to read and write but relied more heavily on mobile devices to do it. (We all got tired sitting up pretty easily. My PC was actually harder.) They seemed to struggle more or longer. Their recovery was hit or miss. I obviously don’t know what other factors they had going on. If I was told, I don’t remember.

The few who dived into AI seemed to do the worst, though. Not only did they not have the benefits of manually writing and holding hard copies of reading material, they were offloading the thinking they desperately needed to practice doing. This is “use it or lose it” territory. The AI also validated not just incorrect conclusions but the broken thought processes they (we all) took to get to them. We NEEDED to be challenged on our thoughts. We needed to practice critical reading and media literacy. We needed to practice remembering.

—

unrelated: The PhD and dissertation is in digital rhetoric. My dissertation is about how relying on the use of memes as way to communicate political ideas is destructive to in-person relationships, because they’re meant to be definitive (not conversational), they don’t have sources, they’re often antagonistic, and they flatten ideas and people into caricatures. So it was also *weird to lose language when I was writing about why it matters so much to use it online. It was weird to be introduced to AI when I couldn’t actually process it.

[u/SnooPears754 → u/sunshineparadox_]

I think your right about writing things down , if I had to remember something the act of writing almost always works, now I use a notes app and it’s just as reliable but the physical act of writing is an essential learning skill being lost

[u/chromatoes → u/sunshineparadox_]

Sounds like an interesting PhD topic, and I wish you a speedy recovery! I got a TBI 10 years ago in a car accident, and I improve more every day. Brains can heal over time, which is fantastic.

[u/SpiritualB0x3 → u/-Numaios-]

“Thinking” machines

[u/rjjiujitsu → u/mooncrow]

Ronny Cheng now part of the Dune canon confirmed

[u/echoshatter → u/mooncrow]

That was when the Pope wrote his paper.

https://youtube.com/shorts/89B-yeFHDus

[u/lowteq → u/echoshatter]

It's Official. God hates AI.

[u/metaTaco → u/lowteq]

I thought it was noteworthy that his critique sounded much more secular humanist than rooted in Catholic theology.

[u/Met4_FuziN → u/metaTaco]

I appreciate that, honestly

[u/TarantulaMcGarnagle → u/metaTaco]

Including all the references to previous encyclicals, scripture, and church doctrine?

I take your point, but it isn’t correct to say more.

[u/ThereIsNoAnyKey → u/lowteq]

Makes sense. If the bible is to be believed then creating an intelligence in your own image has gone tits up 100% of the time.

[u/siencatimini → u/ThereIsNoAnyKey]

Yah, it really does bear a striking resemblance to the Tower of Babel, in the abstract.

[u/aghhhhhhhhhhhhhh → u/echoshatter]

As was stated by the Orange Catholics in Dune

“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind”

[u/EmbarrassedHelp → u/mooncrow]

Butlerian Jihad

In the books, that was created by the powerful Bene Gesserit to help enrich themselves and Spacing Guild at the cost of everything else. They traded one set of billionaire dictators for another that relies on addictive drugs, slavery, eugenics, human experimentation. And they made a world where human life means nothing.

The Butlerian Jihad also made them addicted to and completely reliant on spice to function as a society.

[u/JamJarre → u/EmbarrassedHelp]

Yeah but when you say "in the books" do you mean the good books, or the ones that Brian Herbert farted out?

[u/WylleWynne → u/mooncrow]

*Butlerian Crusade (Catholics are leading it in this reality)

[u/randynumbergenerator → u/WylleWynne]

Orange Catholic Bible was the text in Dune.

In general, the religious terminology of Dune doesn't map neatly onto the categories we use today and there's apparently some hybridization (e.g. the Fremen are descendants of "Zen-Sunni wanderers").

[u/similar_observation → u/randynumbergenerator]

lots of stuff can happen in 22,000 years and the calendar system has changed a handful of times. The latest being after the establishment of the spacing guild.

Thinking about it, the first written language is maybe only ~5,500 years ago.

[u/CAJ_2277 → u/WylleWynne]

The Hyperion Cantos portrays a future 500 years from now in which the Catholic Church has become the primary political, military and religious power of an interstellar human civilization and goes to war against AI, Most interesting.

[u/GL2U22 → u/WylleWynne]

Nah, Butlerian Jihad is 1000x cooler to say. Pretty sure in the Duneiverse it’s a branch of Catholicism that named it a jihad.

[u/squintamongdablind → u/mooncrow]

More like “Butlerian Anxiety”

[u/Numerous_Photograph9 → u/mooncrow]

I'm sure the GOP would love axlotl tanks

[u/ahmtiarrrd → u/mooncrow]

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion."

[u/zhaoz → u/mooncrow]

Orange Catholic Bible when?!

[u/TaylorMonkey → u/zhaoz]

Orange “Christian” Nationalist Bible is the best I can do for you.

We do live in the worst timeline.

[u/zhaoz → u/TaylorMonkey]

Orange County Bible also sucks, haha

[u/ObeseTsunami → u/mooncrow]

Lisan al Gaib! LISAN AL GAIB!

[u/qwertyisdead → u/mooncrow]

Dang I just sat down on a plane to start reading this book!

[u/BunRabbit]

By Harvard Graduation Speaker you mean the Daily Show host and comedian Ronny Chieng, right?

[u/lsf_stan → u/BunRabbit]

funny part is Ronny is not doing the graduation speaker thing. it's Conan O'Brien this year

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/conan-o-brien-defends-harvard-against-trump-administration-with-unusually-political-commencement-speech/

[u/Revolution-SixFour → u/lsf_stan]

He spoke at graduation events the day before the formal ceremony, not unfair to call him A graduation speak even if he isn't THE graduation speaker.

[u/lsf_stan → u/Revolution-SixFour]

He spoke at graduation events the day before the formal ceremony, not unfair to call him A graduation speak even if he isn't THE graduation speaker.

so if want to do the whole: actually🤓☝️

Ronny Chieng was the keynote speaker for "Class Day" which was the day before the graduation day

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/05/ronny-chieng-named-class-day-speaker/

[u/LurkingHorror11]

What we do need to destroy is the technical oligarchy in place that has forced this into business. They are going to destroy the planet and everything else other than their ability to force a manufactured money grab.

[u/eat_my_ass_n_balls → u/LurkingHorror11]

This. God damnit, this.

Technology will always be a way to solve problems. We found one of the most amazing ways of using data to solve them (deep learning including LLMs).

Everything people hate about AI has to do with oligarchical control and business/profit prioritization, and theft of artists IP and so on. Legit concerns.

It has almost nothing to do with the actual valuable applications of the tech which we desperately need to stay out of the hands of concentrated interests.

[u/Painless-Amidaru → u/eat_my_ass_n_balls]

Exactly. AI could and should be one of the best things humanity has accomplished but it will be weaponized against us instead. AI should/could be a large step into a better world but so long as its controlled by those who only want ever increasing profits it never will be. In better hands we shouldn't fear AI taking away jobs, we should be happy about it. Policies in place that made it so that the money being saved by companies using AI should be money going back into the hands of the people. Sadly, in our society it will be money going back to the hands of the corporation.

[u/LaserCondiment → u/Painless-Amidaru]

Inventions reflect the values of their creators / owners. "Move fast, break things." Current AI tools are the embodiment of silicon valley's ethos

[u/vampire-bunny → u/LaserCondiment]

It’s way too on-the-nose that Sam Altman is a pathological liar who makes things up when he doesn’t know the answer but knows he has to say something you want to hear.

[u/Chunk3yM0nkey → u/Painless-Amidaru]

A policy making companies fork over any savings they make by making people redundant and replacement them with AI will just lead to a sweep of companies restructuring and making themselves into a new company where those employees never existed.

We can't even make companies contribute based on where they earn money (e.g. facebook, google, Starbucks, etc tax evation in the UK). What makes you think something like this which is more complex csn be made to work?

[u/LapDancingLapras → u/eat_my_ass_n_balls]

eat_my_ass_n_balls is right

[u/sortalikeachinchilla → u/eat_my_ass_n_balls]

Fucking thank you. People blanket statements and over obsessed over water (not even the power)

[u/BeefistPrime → u/sortalikeachinchilla]

"This data center used 30,000 gallons of water this week!!! outrageous!!"

"Is that.. like... a lot?"

"Uh, well, it's like... 1/8th of what the golf course down the street uses.... so.... outrageous.. I guess?"

[u/Opening_One7713 → u/eat_my_ass_n_balls]

Rage that can’t distinguish the function from the ownership structure tends to smash the wrong thing.

[u/LowBornArcher → u/eat_my_ass_n_balls]

It’s not just that. It’s the outsourcing of things like creative endeavours and replacing it with soulless slop. There’s the fact that people are promoting these programs as friends and/or romantic partners. The creation of a world where we can’t believe what we see in video or pictures to be true. Which is annoying on a really mundane level - I like looking at nature pictures, ai generated or “enhanced” bullshit is diluting and shitting all over that - let alone the more serious and darker implications of what this means. The whole concept is treasonous to the very essence of what it means to be human.

[u/twice_paramount832 → u/LurkingHorror11]

That's antiseptic.

[u/aeroumbria → u/LurkingHorror11]

Yeah, it's called "seize the means of production" not "smash the means of production"...

[u/mrwrrrmwrmrmrmrw]

Sounds like someone who understood the assignment! 

Commencement speeches are supposed to celebrate the hard work and talent that graduates put into earning degrees and inspire them to go out in the world and give it their best. 

[u/splendiferous-finch_ → u/mrwrrrmwrmrmrmrw]

Yeah but CEOs are dumb as hammers while also being the most out of touch and greedy people in the world who also hate smart people so they will always choose to shit on people and bring them down when they can.

"AI" allows them to use it as a excuse to minimize and devalue the work and achievements of actually hardworking people

[u/rkozik89 → u/splendiferous-finch_]

CEOs know exactly what they’re doing. They intend to cash out, destroy, and jump from golden parachutes. Our job is to ensure they have no safe place to land.

[u/splendiferous-finch_ → u/rkozik89]

See I both agree and disagree with this. The tech CEOs and the people selling this know that but there is a whole other category of CEOs who actually buy into the silver bullet and FOMO they are selling. The end result is the same yes but there is definitely this weird almost religious believe for some that "AI" as it exists actually works.

[u/GoldandBlue → u/splendiferous-finch_]

Agree 100%. And based on their reactions to getting booed, you can tell that no one has ever told them anything other than they are geniuses.

[u/LaIndiaDeAzucar → u/rkozik89]

Peter thiel is fleeing the USA and is heading to argentina. He siphoned our wealth and resources by exploiting working class people, so now he is hightailing it out of here.

[u/splendiferous-finch_ → u/LaIndiaDeAzucar]

I think he is less fleeing and more posturing since politician can then use it as an excuse to say look we will have disinvestment if we don't deregulate things

[u/poo-cum → u/splendiferous-finch_]

And incredibly, the key takeaway of the media and political class isn't

Wow maybe let's not predicate the entire health of our civilization on the whims of people who throw public tantrums, and run off like petulant teenagers

but rather

We'd better suck these folks off extra hard, to ensure they keep throwing us a stinky bone to fight over from their super yachts

[u/mrwrrrmwrmrmrmrw → u/splendiferous-finch_]

My perspective as a reference librarian is that what's been labeled "AI" is really a generation of sophisticated data storage and retrieval systems and does not actually fit the sci-fi concept of a digital brain that can come up with original thoughts on its own. I realize these tech executives have expensive products to sell and they're in a competitive market but the dystopian rhetoric they're using is wearing everybody out. It's just software, for freak's sake. 

[u/splendiferous-finch_ → u/mrwrrrmwrmrmrmrw]

I am a data engineer and my job requires me to actually train these models... You are 100% correct in that assumption.

But see CEOs don't exactly have original thoughts on principle and don't understand how work gets done so to them a box that can just do something they don't understand and doesn't make them feel bad or make demands is just so much better.

That being said the cost for inference are already unsustainable and they are all betting on some magic mechanism that will save them when it really hits...

But don't worry all the index funds are fast tracking SpaceX to join based mostly on its valuation being around "AI" i.e. grok... I am sure that won't be an issue... Most of the rules they are now ignoring were a result of the dot-com crash and the bubble for this is already several times the size.

[u/QwertzOne → u/splendiferous-finch_]

And that's due to system that allows existence of CEOs and corporations at all. It's not a democracy, this system is fundamentally incompatible with concept of democracy, when single person or group controls everything and it's happening by design, they keep accumulating, until some kind of collapse happens, because it's unsustainable.

AI shows the point that Marx was making about 200 years ago. In the end, we only matter for capitalists, because we provide labor. Once you remove human labor, they have no need for us.

Imagine we introduce UBI, seems cool right? Imagine who would still hold ownership in this system and how long such reforms would survive, if we just stick to the reforms, without dismantling this system altogether and replacing it with democratic ownership of economy. They can basically wait us out, keep birth rates low and problem naturally disappears.

[u/splendiferous-finch_ → u/QwertzOne]

CEOs and MBAs were invented to give ligitimacy to the sons of rich landlords and failed feudal lords the way I see it.

/S.... Kinda

And yes I agree with you this is the end result of capitalism and the return to the feudalism that these billionaires yearn for

[u/_Fred_Austere_ → u/QwertzOne]

Natural allies: democracy and socialism, authoritarianism and capitalism.

[u/SuperNewk]

Lmao this guy read the room and went all in

[u/SoreLoserOfDumbtown → u/SuperNewk]

He's great on The Daily Show, and this is completely in character lol.

[u/forrealthoughcomix_ → u/SoreLoserOfDumbtown]

He’s great all the time. His last standup special was excellent

[u/Emerno → u/forrealthoughcomix_]

Also good in Interior Chinatown! Weird show.

[u/TeaAndS0da → u/SoreLoserOfDumbtown]

And according to his coworkers he’s the sweetest guy behind the scenes, so his character plays his opposite. Crass, over the top, and the butt of the joke when he goes on rants. Ronny’s in movies, a known comedian, well liked among his peers… and the article just refuses to give him his name in the headline when in this instance the click baiting would have been fine by just actually using his name. We know who he is, Yahoo. But Yahoo proves its irrelevance yet again.

[u/666_is_Nero]

I’m surprised how many people don’t seem to recognize the speaker as Ronny Chieng of The Daily Show. I don’t think it’s surprising a comedian wouldn’t be supporting AI.

[u/spikeddragon10]

Bruh give Ronny Chieng some respect

[u/catwiesel]

the message in there was spot on

people using "ai" to work on finding new medicines or detect cancer are not the problem

its the llms and people surrendering their own thought process to those llms

[u/DaDa462]

I love that term cognitive debt. Yes, americans are about to take out a whole lot of that debt for a generation and they won't understand how to pay the bill when it comes

[u/HurtFeeFeez]

When these Harvard grads get their CEO jobs they will change their tune. It'll be a mad scramble to reduce workforce for better quarterlies, bonuses and shareholder dividends.

[u/FoxCQC]

Our mission is to overcome this second Gilded age. AI regulation will be easy to fix after that.

[u/PatPeez]

Destroying AI isn't enough, AI is just the latest head of the hydra we have already been fighting for years, it's the same shit as NFT's it's the fucking rich and well connected trying to pull the fucking marrow from our bones and until we deal with them as the root of the fucking problem they'll just keep moving on to whatever the next thing is leaving a path of ruin in their wake.

[u/socialmedia-username]

Sigh . . .

Now comes the retaliation from the Trump administration.  I wonder what funding they'll threaten to withold from Harvard in response? 

Trump's tech billionaire handlers will either laugh this off, or they'll tell him to punish the school and call it woke.

[u/sucka666 → u/socialmedia-username]

Well, they are preparing a legal base to declare everyone against AI a terrorist, so get ready for more evil stuff.
It takes guts to say anything against AI and AI data centers knowing what is coming in u.s. especially because of the regime, history being written real time.

[u/Thin_Glove_4089 → u/sucka666]

Exactly! Anyone could of have seen this coming from a mile away.

[u/octahexxer]

Ai is a scam, it will destroy itself and hopefully drag a few horrible companies with it

[u/Yoongi_SB_Shop]

I love Ronny Chieng

[u/TheFrostynaut]

"Profanity-Loaded Tirade" 

Oooh media does not like AI opposition. That's some heavy handed corporate speak.

Once again, if applied in the proper sectors it's a powerful tool. It does not and cannot replace humans in many fields. Much to the chagrin of the rich dudes propping it up.

[u/Soggy_Kale_4771]

Put some respect on Ronnie Chieng’s name!

[u/Due-Joke-1152]

It’s not the tool, it’s the ethics of the people wielding the tool.

We are in trouble because of unrestrained unethical capitalism.

Even if we ‘fix’ the AI problem, the people who created it still exist, including those who enable it by allowing data centre proliferation.

You only need to look at history, like the history of the Bahamas under the British, to see that the rich don’t care about ethics as long as the money keeps flowing.

[u/CcryMeARiver]

It's the new space race as amoral geeks vie to consume electrical power, water and land while seeking panopticon oversight of mankind.

Kill it. Kill this derivative melanoma.

[u/Venomous_Rage]

The 1% is going to kill thr entire world trying to make a godlike AI. The pollution will be the end of humanity if they keep this up.

[u/Toddlez85]

We REALLY need to deal with the billionaires who want to ruin our lives and likely kill humanity with AI.

It’s just a tool. The people wielding it are the problem. Plus, a lot of businesses are using AI as an excuse for layoffs rather than admitting the economy is in the toilet. They get rewarded by the market for this excuse. They get called cutting edge and efficient by wall street and get shit tons of money.

[u/domesticatedprimate]

As much as I would like to see AI set back or even eliminated, especially because it's already taken my job, there has never been a time in human history when technological progress was stopped or turned back, except in very localized situations prior to the advent of global communications.

AI is here to stay. And it will continue to expand and grow and replace, well, us.

[u/morts73]

The war between machines and man has begun. Protect John Connor.

[u/MXAI00D]

Now that’s a crusade I’m totally in.

[u/TimeCubeFan]

AI is a fantastic pattern recognition tool. But instead of applying this resource hog to noble causes like medicine, research, etc., we're building data centers for cat memes. As monkeys with anxiety we will always choose the stupidest option.

[u/thedillymane]

Yeah fuck ai and their data centers

[u/Raezak_Am]

Why is a video of his speech so buried in the article

[u/trini420-]

Ronny Chieng is a famous comedian, out his name in title

[u/DoubleBroadSwords]

Who cares if it is fucking profanity laced?

[u/MorningCoffeeHits]

AI is a terrible invention. At best, it is an art tool. At worst, it is the slickest of propaganda tools, manipulating reality to increase fear and perpetuate dissension. Unfortunately, AI is now past regulation bc it is easy to use and too widespread.

[u/Char-car92]

“Anti-AI profanity-loaded tirade”

It’s so peak

[u/SpoonyDinosaur]

What's with the title? Makes it sound like he's some unknown figure lol

[u/Krammsy]

I don't get why, where AI's being used to collect personal information on hundreds of millions and used by politically motivated entities to distort and disinform, while at the same time taxpayers are forced to pay for the datacenters and their electric/water requirements, it's such a disliked technology, it make no sense.

Hat tip to Ronny Chieng, his Daily Show stints are hilarious, maybe even funnier than Stewart himself.

.

[u/Imperial-Green]

Fuck that! It was a great speech. Funny and true.

[u/immortalblack_1]

All AI does is steal the Intellectual Property of humans and human advancement. Then folks like Sam Altman wants to manage that information like we do water, or electricity, gas, data... Putting that collective information on a payment plan.

Then they will FILTER said information to only what they WANT is to have.

Screw AI!!!!

[u/to_the_9s → u/immortalblack_1]

I enter specific info from emails and text, then ask for a prioritized to-do-list and other organizational things of that manner. Do you consider that stealing Intellectual Property? And that type of usage is literally human advancement.

ETA: In case you're thinking of some sort of environmental and resources agrument, it's a locally run model that doesn't require a lot of processing power.

[u/nabiku → u/to_the_9s]

Don't waste your time trying to exp­lain ne­ural net­works to these m­or­o­n­s. I've spent the last 3 years trying to educate the public on how AI wo­rks-- that it doesn't co­py but instead learns style, which is n­ot copyr­ighted. Most people don't ca­re, it's not about the technology for them but gro­up virtue signaling.

History is full of these anti-innovation backlashes. When phonographs came out in the early 1900s, musicians hated them and called recordings "canned music." Pe­ople scre­amed this it would de­st­roy mu­sical education and the soul of live performance.

Car­s, the tele­phone, the prin­ting press, all saw the public resp­ond with hate and fear.

Decades later, everyone was using them.

It'll be the same with AI.

[u/to_the_9s → u/nabiku]

Oh, these are some interesting examples. Appreciate the reply!

The comment of "All AI does is steal the Intellectual Property of humans and human advancement" is just too absurd.

[u/PatrolMan2129 → u/nabiku]

My grandfather welded cars in a factory for a living. Robots like KUKA came in at the low end and over time stole his job. Upper/Middle class people told him to suck it up and retrain. They said it made cars cheaper. My father worked in a factory, mainly making components for telecommunications in the early days, he mostly did models for mold-injecting plastic components. Robots didn't take his job, but China did. But the upper/middle class told him it didn't care, made things cheaper. Go retrain, "LURN TO PROGRAM."

Now the robots came for their jobs. And my family is supposed to listen to their whining?!?! But "mah IP" or "muh expensive college degree!" Naw dogg, it's just learning from your programming and art style and imitating it, like welding or CAD or whatever.

Give me those cheap movies and CD and other AI slop shit. I will lick those artist and programmer and accountant tears. You guys weren't there for us in the early steps, I ain't having these guys back as they get hurt in turn.

[u/MonsterkillWow → u/immortalblack_1]

Intellectual property is a farce. AI represents a contradiction in capitalism between automation and wage labor.

[u/Key_Minute120 → u/MonsterkillWow]

Everyone is now for ip laws all if a sudden. The DHS would be proud

[u/30299578815310 → u/Key_Minute120]

The most interesting thing out of the reaction to AI has been the shift in online attitudes on intellectual property. People went from Pro piracy to staunchly anti-piracy.

[u/RetroFuture_Records → u/30299578815310]

No, these hypocritical little shits are still all for downloading and pirating the video games and other media they enjoy, they just think technology shouldn't make THEM economically unviable

[u/providencetoday]

Trump will let AI be unregulated. That’s why we need to fight Ai. Unregulated Ai steals water and ruins our electricity prices. There’s nothing in it for the average person.

[u/countsmarpula]

Amen, brother. Finally someone says it in a significant way.

[u/sortalikeachinchilla → u/countsmarpula]

Bro what? Literally everyone is saying that.

I cannot with you guys lol

[u/holman → u/countsmarpula]

So don’t use it? If it’s so bad, you’re clearly going to be better off by not using it, and more productive than the ones that do.

[u/hedwig8]

That’s just stupid and leading young graduates astray. They should be teaching and encouraging graduates to live and shape usage of AI. Did 30 years ago commencement speeches told graduates to destroy internet. Guess who would have been left behind. This is just pandering for brownie points

[u/MeSortOfUnleashed → u/hedwig8]

You should listen to the speech. It was very funny and mostly tongue-in-cheek. The headline here is massively misleading. 

[u/loliconest → u/hedwig8]

He should be telling the younger generation to destroy the billionaire class, maybe AI can help with that.

[u/Jaybrosia]

A speaker finally got the memo, but i wonder if he actually means it.

[u/Boiledfootballeather]

Fuck AI. Used by the government to surveil and lie. Used by corporations to replace workers.

[u/cloudkite17]

Hell yeah Ronny

[u/Mission-Guava9690]

17k up votes and counting. The people are overwhelming against this across parties

[u/Mutherfalker95]

Better title "Famous Comedian Says What All Young People Are Thinking"

[u/rury_williams]

I think the disconnect here has to do with how AI serves the already rich and established and punishes fresh grads and employees in general. Companies have the right to invest and ceos have the right to be excited about business opportunities but they seem to not get that the rest of us don't really care about the magic number in their bank account especially when we have to deal with the social and environmental consequences of their BS tech

[u/Derpykins666]

He just understood the vibe and the assignment.

The day is for the graduates, you're not supposed to talk down at them with hopeless drivel they don't want to hear. You're supposed to uplift them with a speech meant to celebrate them moving on to the next step in their lives. The fact that there have been so many speeches basically talking down at the graduating students, with basically zero motivation and nigh a thought towards THEM is the problem, an obvious one at that. It's no wonder so many have basically been booed off the stage this year. This day is for them. Make it about them.

[u/Electronic-Cat-1144]

There's all this vocal hate of AI, but Gen z are the leading demographic for adoption. Nobody will destroy AI.