Artificial intelligence has been an inescapable topic of commencement speeches this spring, including President Alan M. Garber’s Baccalaureate address on Tuesday. Ronny Chieng’s remarks on the subject, however, likely contained the most expletives.
“Can I just say f**k AI, f**k AI, f**k AI?” the comedian, actor, and rotating host of The Daily Show asked in his keynote speech during the Class Day celebration on Wednesday. The crowd at Tercentenary Theatre, made up of the graduating Class of 2026 and their friends and families, answered him with a roar of approval.
“I’m glad you agree,” Chieng said. “It’s so stupid. A lot of other respected graduation speakers at colleges around America are talking about you guys needing to master AI for the future. I’m here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI, kill it.”
Chieng’s speech also took shots at Harvard’s ties to the Epstein files and its recently announced grade inflation reforms. “The more A’s you hand out, the better everyone looks. I can’t believe I have to explain this. Did you guys go to Harvard?” he said.
Beyond calling for its demise, Chieng went on to articulate a more nuanced unpacking of his wariness toward AI. Sure, he acknowledged, the technology has potential “to pioneer breakthroughs in medicine and physics. If you’re using it for that purpose, you’re not part of the problem.”
But he bemoaned its smoothing the way for cognitively basic tasks, like responding to emails, and the potential to rob people of the messy, satisfying work of creativity.
“Untalented people love bragging about using AI to help them draft their speeches, and their scripts, and their podcasts, and their promo videos for UFC fights at the White House,” Chieng said. “What they're missing is this: the creating is the fun part.”
His favorite part of comedy writing, he said, “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 reason AI-generated content isn’t as good, Chieng argued, is that the journey of making and learning something matters —“it’s the point of all of this.”
“Whatever your chosen profession is, please don’t let AI rob you of the fun part of it,” he told the senior class. “Our generation’s upcoming battle…is going to be people with substance versus people with shallow knowledge, it’s going to be mastery versus faking it, it’s going to 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.”
The way to do that, he advised, is to follow your passions. “Chase the thing that you can’t stop talking about every day to the point where it ruins all your relationships,” he said. “When you have clarity of purpose and you’re doing something you love, every day can be a joy.”
He closed by urging the graduates to think of the people in their lives who helped them get to this point— parents, mentors, loved ones— and try to be that transformative person for someone else. Maybe someone who can fight AI, even.
“One day soon, some kids will be asking you for advice for after they graduate,” he said. “And you can say, ‘Be kind, be joyful, but for the love of God, help me destroy these machines first.’”
The Class Day program also included student speakers and award winners from the graduating class; an address from David Deming, the Danoff dean of Harvard College; and David Battat ’91, the incoming president of the Harvard Alumni Association.
In his remarks, Deming told the graduating class to embrace the virtues that can be brought on by hardships and to appreciate catching the lucky breaks life offers when they do arise.
“Adversity doesn’t help you economically, but it can build moral character, and the world needs moral character now more than ever,” he said. “You don’t want to be the kind of person who thinks they deserve everything good that happened to them.”
Giving the Harvard Oration, “Remember to Dream Big,” Ihechikarageme Munonye ’26 echoed Chieng in urging her fellow graduates to pursue what they truly love. Raised in a low-income neighborhood in Washington, D.C., she initially chose concentrations at Harvard that seemed more practical, like economics, before switching to sociology, art, and film.
“I allowed myself to envision a life where success and passion need not exist on opposite sides of the spectrum,” she said, through tears. “Do not abandon the
passions that made you who you are today.”
In the more lighthearted Ivy Oration, Hamza Masoud ’26, a member of the Lampoon, fondly recounted the specific joys of campus life at Harvard and made light of the University’s biggest stories and controversies from the past year.
“While we were here, we saw falls turn into winters, winters turn into springs, springs turn into summers, and Summers turn into a former university professor,” he said—in a shot at former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers.
“But we also changed,” he continued. “When I entered Harvard, I believed that grade inflation was a myth. Four years later, I have a GPA of 3.968 and am graduating at the bottom of my class.”
During the program, Alexandra Fernand ’26 and Jamie Durant ’26 received the 2026 Ames Awards, given to two graduating seniors for outstanding community service. Fernand was recognized for her service work with the Brookview House in Boston; Durant for founding the Jews for Palestine group on Harvard’s campus and his work as the director of the Cambridge After-School Program.
To close the afternoon, a group of seven 2026 graduates sang the 2026 Class Ode, with original lyrics by Alyssa Marie Gaines to the tune of “Fair Harvard.”
