‘Destroy AI’: Comedian-actor Ronny Chieng tells Harvard graduates to ‘kill’ artificial intelligence; and, they love It

Published 11 June 2026 · tech

Comedian and actor Ronny Chieng delivered one of the most memorable Harvard Class Day addresses in recent memory. The Crazy Rich Asians star walked onto

Comedian and actor Ronny Chieng delivered one of the most memorable Harvard Class Day addresses in recent memory. The Crazy Rich Asians star walked onto the stage and immediately floored the graduating class of 2026. His speech blended sharp humor with a surprisingly urgent message about artificial intelligence (AI). The crowd responded with thunderous applause throughout. By the end, Chieng impressed some of the brightest young minds in the world. Chieng wasted no time establishing his position on artificial intelligence. "F*** AI," he declared, three times in a row. The graduates erupted. “I'm here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI. Kill it,” he said. The comedian admitted he had prepared a completely different speech just in case the crowd disagreed. He would not need it. Also Read | AI Tool of the Week: this ChatGPT feature turns documents into presentations He immediately launched into jokes at AI's expense. He said he had asked AI for the fastest route from New York City to Harvard. It told him to take FlixBus. "I'm a movie star," he shot back. "I don't take the bus. Acela only." The hall roared with laughter. He then pointed out what AI was allegedly saying about Harvard. According to Chieng, AI claimed Harvard had a $56.9 billion endowment. It also claimed the Harvard Graduate Students Union was striking for a livable wage of $25 an hour. "There's no way that's true," he deadpanned.

"How bad are these AI hallucinations getting?" The graduates, who knew the figures were accurate, laughed even harder. Chieng's central argument arrived wrapped in a Terminator 2 metaphor. He told the graduates that their generation's true mission was not to "master AI for the future." Their mission was to destroy it. The crowd clapped loudly in agreement. "To accomplish this, you'll have to capture and reprogram an AI to be on the side of humanity," he said. They would then need to commandeer its time-traveling technology and send it back to defeat the current AI before it gains sentience. "This isn't just graduation day," Chieng declared. "This is Terminator 2 Judgment Day." He briefly acknowledged the obvious objection. Someone in the crowd, he predicted, would ask about AI's role in medical and physics breakthroughs. His response was instant: "Shut up, nerd! I'm not talking about that." The laughter was deafening. He clarified that he was talking about the accumulation of "cognitive debt" from excessive use of large language models. He cited a 2025 MIT study published in Archive to back his point. He then took a dig at MIT itself, drawing cheers from the Harvard crowd. Dumb People and AI Chieng's sharpest observations came when he described how mediocre people were already misusing AI. He did an impression of someone bragging about AI reading, summarizing, and responding to their emails. "You know who else can do that? Me," he said. "How useless are you?