A famous comedian told Harvard graduates to destroy AI. The crowd went wild.
Daily Show host Ronny Chieng shocked the Class of 2026 by telling them to fight against machines instead of learning to use them.
We are told to embrace the future or get left behind. But a crowd of elite students just cheered for a very different plan: destroying the machines.
WHAT HAPPENED
Comedian Ronny Chieng gave the keynote speech at Harvard's Class Day on Wednesday. He did not tell the Class of 2026 to master artificial intelligence. Instead, he told them to kill it.
Chieng told the crowd that making things is the best part of life. He said AI takes away the joy of writing and thinking. The crowd of students and parents answered his calls with a loud roar of support.
The comedian also joked about Harvard's deep secrets. He brought up the school's ties to the Jeffrey Epstein files. He also poked fun at how easy it is to get straight A's at the school.
What the money/evidence shows
- Ronny Chieng called on the Class of 2026 to "destroy AI, kill it" during his speech.
- The comedian argued that using AI for basic tasks like writing emails robs people of the joy of creating.
- Student speaker Ihechikarageme Munonye urged graduates to follow their true passions over high-paying careers.
- Student speaker Hamza Masoud joked that his high 3.968 GPA still put him at the bottom of his class due to grade inflation.
- Two students, Alexandra Fernand and Jamie Durant, won the 2026 Ames Awards for their work in Boston and Cambridge.
THE BIGGER QUESTION
Are we giving up our humanity too quickly? Every business leader tells us to adopt AI or lose our jobs. But Chieng asks us to look at what we lose when we let computers do our thinking for us.
The struggle of the future might not be about tech skills. It might be a fight between real taste and cheap fakes. If the smartest students choose to walk away from AI, where does that leave the rest of the workforce?
THE OTHER SIDE
Many tech experts and college leaders argue that AI is a tool we must master to stay ahead. They say that learning AI will help graduates build new medicine and solve physics puzzles. This argument is strong because AI is already changing how these fields work, and ignoring it completely could put workers at a disadvantage.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW
These graduates will soon enter a job market that is obsessed with AI. They will have to choose between taking the easy path with technology or doing the hard work themselves.
For regular people, this speech shows that the pushback against tech is growing. More people are starting to value real human effort over fast, cheap computer work.
WHAT WE STILL DON'T KNOW
- Will any of these Harvard graduates actually try to stop the growth of AI in their careers?
- How will companies respond if top young talent refuses to use automated tools?
- Will Harvard change its grading system after students openly joked about easy grades?