‘Destroy AI’: Comedian Ronny Chieng tells Harvard grads to ‘kill’ AI; and they love it | Today’s news
Comedian and actor Ronny Chieng delivered one of the most memorable Harvard Class Day addresses in recent memory. The Crazy Rich Asians star took the stage and immediately addressed the graduating class of 2026. His speech mixed sharp humor with a surprisingly urgent message about artificial intelligence (AI).
The crowd responded with thunderous applause throughout. By the end, Chieng had impressed some of the brightest young minds in the world.
Chieng wasted no time in shaping his stance on artificial intelligence. “F*** AI,” he declared three times in a row. Graduates erupted.
“I’m here to tell you that your generation’s mission is to destroy AI. Kill it,” he said.
The comedian admitted that he prepared a completely different speech in case the crowd disagreed. He wouldn’t need it.
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He immediately started making jokes about the AI. He said he asked the AI for the fastest route from New York to Harvard. It told him to take FlixBus. “I’m a movie star,” he snapped. “I don’t take the bus. Only the Acela.” The hall roared with laughter.
He then pointed out what the AI allegedly said about Harvard. According to Chieng, AI claimed that Harvard had an endowment of $56.9 billion. It also claimed that the Harvard Graduate Student Union was on strike for a $25 an hour livable wage.
“No way that’s true,” he sneered. “How bad are those AI hallucinations?”
Graduates who knew the data was accurate laughed even harder.
Chieng’s central argument arrived wrapped in a Terminator 2 metaphor. He told the graduates that their generation’s real mission was not to “master AI for the future.” Their mission was to destroy her. The crowd clapped loudly in agreement.
“To do that, you’re going to have to capture and reprogram the AI to be on the side of humanity,” he said. Then they would need to master her time travel technology and send her back to defeat the current AI before it regains its senses.
“This is not just graduation day,” Chieng declared. “This is Terminator 2 doomsday.
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He briefly acknowledged the obvious objection. He predicted that someone in the crowd would ask about the role of artificial intelligence in medical and physical discoveries.
His response was immediate, “Shut up you moron! That’s not what I’m talking about.”
The laughter was deafening. He specified that he was talking about the accumulation of “cognitive debt” from the excessive use of large language models. He cited a 2025 MIT study published in the Archive to support his claim. He then toured MIT itself, drawing cheers from the Harvard crowd.
Stupid humans and AI
Chieng’s sharpest observations came when he described how average people were already abusing AI. He made it seem like someone was bragging about AI reading, summarizing and replying to emails.
“You know who else can do that? Me,” he said. “How useless are you? Do you need artificial intelligence to match me?” The applause was immediate and sustained.
He argued that gaining real advantage from AI requires a “minimum escape velocity of intelligence”. He told the Harvard graduates that they probably have. Everyone else, he warned, would just get dumber.
“And that’s when you score on them,” he said to more cheers.
“Creating is the fun part”
When Chieng talked about his own craft, the speech changed tone. He described the joy of coming up with the “puzzle pieces” of a joke. He said the confidence gained from achieving something difficult is irreplaceable. Why would he want the AI to take it away?
He used a personal anecdote to drive home the point. He tried to introduce a friend to Buddhism through a book called Buddhism Made Simple. Instead of reading it, the friend used AI to summarize it in ten seconds.
“He has not attained enlightenment,” Chieng said. “Speed Buddhism turned out to be completely meaningless. The room erupted into applause again.
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“The journey is not just how we acquire skills,” Chieng said, his tone sincere. “The journey is the point of it all.
He paused, then said, “Maybe the real Harvard was the friends we made along the way.” The crowd loved it.
Chieng outlined the real battle ahead starkly. It wouldn’t be humans against AI. “That’s at least two months,” he joked.
The real fight, he said, would be between people with substance and people with shallow knowledge. It would be mastery versus pretend. It would be people with good taste versus bad taste.
“I believe you will put in the work to be on the right side of those battles,” he told the graduates. The applause that followed was among the loudest of the afternoon.
On Money
Chieng closed with a barrage of rapid-fire life advice. He told the graduates to make sure their offline world is better than the online one. He told them to hug their parents.
He told them that “if someone invites you to a private s*x island, always say no.” Everyone knew who he meant.
The actor told them that being cynical is not a sign of intelligence. He reminded them that money was easy for Harvard graduates.
“You can tell jokes on TV. You can run a crypto scam.” But he urged them not to chase it blindly. “Solve the world’s problems,” he said. “Like hunger, access to education, or microplastics in our b*lls.”
His last message was the most honest. When you have a clear goal and are doing something you love, he said, every day can be a joy. That joy spreads to others. And if nothing comes of it? “You can always work for McKinsey.”
The graduates gave him another round of applause.
