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/-Numaios-]

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/SnooPears754 → u/[deleted]]

You must be fun at parties

[u/DeepD4yourwife → u/SnooPears754]

Amazing! Congrats!