Comedian Ronny Chieng unleashed on artificial intelligence during his Harvard Class Day speech, telling students to 'destroy' and 'kill' it.
'Can I just say, fuck AI? Fuck AI. Fuck AI,' Chieng said Saturday as the audience cheered and applauded. He continued: 'It's stupid. It's so stupid. Have you tried using it? It's always wrong. ... AI says that Harvard has a $56.9 billion endowment and that the Harvard Graduate Students Union is on strike to try to get a livable wage increase to $25 an hour. There's no way that's true. I mean, that's ridiculous. How bad are these AI hallucinations getting?'
Chieng continued his rant against AI, saying, 'The mission of your generation is to destroy AI. Kill it.'
'The creating is the fun part,' Chieng, one of the hosts of 'The Daily Show,' said. 'The best part of comedy writing is figuring out the puzzle pieces of a joke and getting the self-regard from having accomplished a difficult thing. Why would I want AI to take that away from me?'
Chieng was a featured guest speaker during Saturday's Harvard Class Day, a pre-commencement celebration. His speech against AI comes as many commencement speakers for different universities around the country faced backlash for telling students that AI is the future.
Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances for Tavistock Development Company, was booed during her May 8 speech at the graduation ceremony for the University of Central Florida's College of Arts and Humanities when she brought up AI. 'The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution,' she said. When the crowd started booing, she looked confused and asked the other people on stage with her what happened.
Eric Schmidt, billionaire and former CEO of Google, was also handed the same fate when he brought up AI during the graduation ceremony for the University of Arizona. Scott Borchetta, CEO of Big Machine Records and the man often credited with discovering Taylor Swift, fought back after he was booed for bringing up AI during his commencement address at Middle Tennessee State University's ceremony. 'Hey, like I said, you can hear me now or pay me later,' he said. 'Then do something about it. It's a tool, make it work for you.'
