Comedian Ronny Chieng to Harvard Graduates: “Destroy AI”

Ronny Chieng arrives at the World Premiere Of DreamWorks Animation And Universal Pictures' 'Kung Fu Panda 4' held at AMC The Grove 14 on March 3, 2024 in Los Angeles, California, United States. (Photo by Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency)

Photo: Image Press Agency/Depositphotos

AI can be a divisive topic, so it takes a clever yet sympathetic person to get the point across about its nuances. That’s why actor and comedian Ronny Chieng seems to be the man for the job. Chieng, who best known for his work on The Daily Show, addressed the Harvard Class of 2026, using laughter to plead against the dangers of AI.

“Look, a lot of other respected graduation speakers and colleges around America are talking about you guys needing to master AI for the future, okay?” Chieng said in his speech. “I’m here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI, kill it.” He also joked that this wasn’t just graduation day for his audience, it was also Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In his comedic plea, he went on to devise a plan. “To accomplish this [destruction of AI], you’ll have to capture and reprogram an AI to be on the side of humanity, then commandeer its own time-traveling technology, send it back to the past to defeat the current AI before it gains sentience.”

The comedian acknowledged that it wasn’t all bad though. “I know that someone’s sitting out here right now who’s just saying, ‘Well, you know, what about the use of AI to pioneer breakthroughs in medicine and physics?’ Well, first of all, shut up, nerd,” he said, making the audience laugh. “I’m not talking about that. Obviously, if you’re using it for that purpose, you are not the problem. Okay? I’m talking about the accumulation of cognitive debt due to excessive use of large language models.” The actor, aware of his educated audience, quoted a study by MIT published in arXiv in 2025.

“Look, this is actually good news, okay?” he continued. “This is why you guys shouldn’t be scared of AI. ’Cause I think AI is just gonna end up making mediocre people dumber. Have you heard how dumb people brag about how they use AI? They’re always like, ‘Hey, did you know that AI can now read my email, summarize it, and draft a response?’ Yeah, you know who else can do that? Me. I can do that. You can’t do that? How useless are you? You need artificial intelligence just to match me. I’m a dumbass who couldn’t get into Harvard.”

Chieng added that AI can be the fuel, but fuel is useless if people can’t kindle the fire. Using his job as an example, he said that creating and being challenged is the fun part, so people shouldn’t relegate that to AI. “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?”

The actor wrapped his take on AI saying that whatever the graduates’ chosen profession was, to not let AI steal the joy out of it. “I think your generation’s upcoming battle won’t be humans against AI. That’s at least two months away,” he joked. “It’s gonna be people with substance versus people with shallow knowledge. It’s gonna be mastery versus faking it. It’s gonna be people with good taste versus tacky. I trust you will put in the work necessary to be on the right side of those battles.”

Chieng’s speech is in large contrast to recent graduation speakers who have lauded the emergence and rise of AI. Speakers like Big Machine Records CEO Scott Borchetta, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and real estate executive Gloria Caufield all received uproarious boos this graduation season. Each one delivered a tone-deaf speech about how AI should be embraced and how jobs will be changing, which is a thinly veiled euphemism that means human-led jobs will be eliminated. Cornell University professor Sarah Kreps astutely says: “These tech executives are not reading the room…These kids have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a degree that they don’t know will serve them well.”

So when Chieng calls for the graduating class to destroy machine learning models, it seems that most of them (if not all) are ready to say “Hasta la vista, baby” to AI.