Ronny Chieng, an Emmy Award-winning actor, comedian, and correspondent for The Daily Show, delivers remarks to the Harvard Class of 2026 during the Harvard College Class Day on Wednesday, May 27th, 2026.
Thank you. Keep it going for yourselves, everybody!
I think we all deserve a round of applause for not looking at our phones for like two hours now. What an achievement. It’s a beautiful day out.
Come on, it’s you guys. Yay, we did it!
Thank you for having me speak here today.
I’m very honored to be your class committee’s last-minute, second-choice speaker. I don’t know who canceled.
I’ve been trying to find out all week, but I guess I’m on the short list of people who’s within Amtrak distance and not in the Epstein files.
I understand it was down to me and Baby Yoda, and I think that guy’s doing press right now. So you’re stuck with me.
Someone who couldn’t get into this college, much less graduate from it.
And by the way, on that topic, before we go any further, do I get a degree for this s*** or what?
Because I was Googling it, and people were getting degrees, and I don’t know, is that just like a commencement speech thing?
Is this like different to that?
This is Class Day, I guess this is like the Gobi tent to the Coachella main stage. All right.
Degrees of our headliners, right, Dean? All right.
My mom actually came from Singapore just to watch this because she thinks I’m graduating from Harvard.
So she’s right in the front row.
So I don’t know, can someone on stage just hand me a piece of paper or something? A scroll, Dean, yeah.
Thank you.
I don’t know, maybe someone here can give me the art history degree.
Trust me, you’re not gonna need it. Seriously.
I had Netflix specials, I had movie premieres. I host a daily show. My mom didn’t come for any of that.
I tell her I’m at Harvard, and she gets on the first flight over.
In fact, my sister also came, and she only came because I told her Conan O’Brien was giving the commencement speech.
That’s the power of this institution that you guys are graduating from.
It’ll make Asians do anything up to and including voting against affirmative action.
So congratulations to all of you again.
Yeah, congratulations on being the last generation of Harvard grads with straight A’s.
You are telling me, for the last 200 years or whatever the f***, everyone at Harvard was a bunch of dumbasses with inflated grades and nobody noticed.
I don’t know what’s dumber: that all your grades have been inflated, or that the professors here just voted to stop inflating your grades.
Do you know how stupid that is?
You do realize the more A’s you hand out, the better everyone looks. I can’t believe I have to explain this to you guys.
Didn’t you guys go to Harvard?
What kind of goody two-shoes professors do you have up here?
No wonder President Trump’s trying to destroy you.
I just noticed there’s a sign language guy who has the sign “President Trump trying to destroy you.” Don’t worry, sign language guy. It gets worse.
Anyway, so no one here has good grades anymore.
But good news, good grades don’t even matter anymore anyway.
Welcome to the real world, graduates, where social media followers are the new GPA.
These days, you can’t even be a barista in Brooklyn with less than 10,000 IG followers.
And if you don’t like that system, well, take it up with Harvard alumni Mark Zuckerberg.
While on the topic of A’s, by the way, can I just say f*** AI?
F*** AI. F*** AI!
I’m so glad you agree.
I prepared a completely different speech in case you guys turned on me, but I won’t be needing that anymore.
F*** AI. F*** it to death, all right? What’s the sign language sign for that?
Good, good to know. It’s stupid.
It’s so stupid. Have you tried using it? It’s always wrong.
Like, I asked AI what’s the fastest way to get from New York City to Harvard, and it told me to take FlixBus. I’m a movie star.
Hello, I don’t take the bus, Acela only.
I mean, do you even know what AI is saying about Harvard?
The garbage that AI is spouting about you guys?
AI says that Harvard has a $56.9 billion endowment, and that the Harvard Graduate Students Union is on strike to try to get a livable wage increase to $25 an hour.
There’s no way that’s true.
I mean, that’s ridiculous.
How bad are these AI hallucinations getting?
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?
I’m here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI, kill it.
To accomplish this, 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.
This isn’t just graduation day, this is “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”
And I know, 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.
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 According to a study by MIT published in 2025 in arXiv.
That’s right, M-I-T. MIT did that study. I guess you guys were too busy giving each other A’s.
Feel free to boo MIT, by the way, and AI, and yourselves, I guess.
Look, this is actually good news, okay? 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.
And from what I can see, getting an actual advantage from AI in the future will require a minimum escape velocity of intelligence that I’m assuming you guys from Harvard have.
Everyone else who can’t match that is just gonna get dumber.
And that’s when you run up the score on them.
Assuming we still have a functioning society, of course, but to run up the score, you’re gonna have to master your craft, okay?
And AI can be the fuel, but fuel is useless if you can’t kindle the fire.
For example, I recently used AI to use regression analysis to prove that a certain race of people are mathematically terrible at sports.
I won’t say which race, but thank you for not inviting Hasan Minhaj to Harvard.
My point is, learning the fundamentals still matter.
If I didn’t know what a regression analysis was, and if I wasn’t fundamentally racist, would I have been able to do any of that? No.
Untalented people love bragging about using AI to help them draft their speeches, and their scripts, and their podcast, and their promo videos for UFC fights at the White House.
Which, to be fair, even if they had filmed that for real, it would still have looked like AI.
But what they’re missing is this: the creating is the fun part.
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?
Feel free to not applaud that, you freaking traitors to humanity.
Why would I want AI to take that away from me?
You know what problem I want AI to solve?
I want the problem of AI making everything look like s***.
I want AI to solve that problem.
How about that?
Or how about, can AI take away the power of comedy writing where my TV pilot gets passed on, and when I ask if I can pitch it to someone else, the network says, “We don’t want it, but we also don’t want anyone else to have it. We just want you to be sad.”
Can AI solve that?
I recently tried to introduce my friend to Buddhism through a book called “Buddhism Made Simple.”
It was literally a book about Buddhism made simple, and instead of reading it, he used AI to summarize it in 10 seconds.
Believe it or not, he didn’t reach enlightenment.
Turns out, speedrunning Buddhism is completely missing the point.
And I know this platitude is almost worthy of AI, but the reason shortcuts to skip to the end aren’t always good is because the journey isn’t just how we acquire skills.
The journey is the point of all this.
It is!
It turns out maybe the real Harvard was the friends we made along the way.
Look, I know this won’t apply to everyone’s industry, okay?
But I’m just saying, whatever your chosen profession is, please don’t let AI rob you of the fun part of it.
I think your generation’s upcoming battle won’t be humans against AI. That’s at least two months away.
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.
And anytime you wanna hand a degree over, Dean, that’d be really nice.
Now, you might be worried about the job market you’re entering, but don’t worry, there are jobs now that exist that we couldn’t have imagined when I graduated.
And it’s gonna be the same for you.
For example, when I graduated 17 years ago, I didn’t know posting photos of my feet could be a full-time job, and in another 17 years, it might be the only job.
So let me try to speak your language here, okay?
‘Cause I know you guys low-key see me as some cooked unc now, but good.
I am an unc.
I am an unc.
Listen to the unc, here’s the unc-fire advice portion of this speech.
Make sure your offline world is better than your online one.
If that wasn’t obvious.
Remember to floss.
Hug your parents.
When someone invites you to a private sex island, always say no.
Always.
Create more than you complain.
Being…
I lost track.
I can’t even count my fingers, that’s how bad my cognitive decline is.
Being cynical or contrarian is not an indication of intelligence.
You will not be able to outperform an index fund.
Make your mistakes.
I want you guys to look to your left and look to your right, right now.
Remember these faces.
Some of you will be evil.
Some of you will be evil people who just want a ton of money.
I just turned 40.
Let me tell you, money isn’t everything.
It’s only good for buying comfort, necessities, peace of mind, and self-worth.
But guess what?
Making money is easy in America, it’s easy.
You can tell dick jokes on TV.
You can run a crypto scam.
You can storm the Capitol and get a payout from the government.
In fact, I’ll prove it to you.
Watch this.
Which camera is it?
This camera?
All right.
Hey, this speech at Harvard is brought to you by Panda Express.
Panda Express.
♪ Have you eaten yet ♪
Do you see that?
I just paid for my kids’ Harvard tuition.
I’m just kidding.
I hope they can go to Yale.
My point is, shut up.
My point is…
You guys are in the same gang anyway.
What are you booing for?
You’re gonna take over Paramount and fire everybody.
My point is…
It’s too real.
It was too real.
Sorry, Dean.
My point is, money is like, too easy for you guys.
We say this to kids all the time:
“You can be anything you want.”
You guys are from Harvard.
You actually can do anything you want.
You can be anything you want.
Yeah, you’re not like these other dumb kids we keep bulls***ting to.
So I’m asking you guys, don’t just chase the money.
You are better than that.
Tackle the world’s problems, like hunger, or access to education, or microplastics in our balls.
Seriously, someone should really get on that.
We’re all laughing here, but we all have microplastics in our balls right now.
Or how about that problem when you’re trying to show your date a photo on your phone, but then a notification appears at the exact same moment, and then you accidentally click on that instead of the photo.
So now she’s reading a private text from your mom, asking if Drake is really a pedophile.
Can someone fix that?
And look, if saving the world is too daunting, at least chase the thing that you can’t stop talking about every day to the point where it ruins all your relationships.
Follow your passions.
For me, that was stand-up comedy.
I love comedy so much.
I gladly skip weddings, birthdays, funerals, just to do open mics.
People were born, people died.
I didn’t even know.
I don’t even know what my family is anymore.
I have no friends.
But what I do have is the ability to talk to myself in a room with three other comics waiting to get on stage.
What I’m saying is, when you have clarity of purpose and you’re doing something you love, every day can be a joy, and that joy can spread to others.
And if you don’t find something that makes you happy that also helps others, remember, you can always just work for McKinsey.
Work for McKinsey.
Go do it.
What’s that?
You can increase profits by firing people?
Wow, what a genius move.
Before I go, I just wanna do something I learned from the GOAT white guy of all time:
Mr. Rogers, the greatest white guy of all time.
When he was accepting an Emmy Award in 1776, this is what he did.
And it’s kind of echoing what everyone here has said already.
So sorry if you heard it, but whatever, you asked me to do this speech in like three days.
So f*** you.
We’re all here because someone believed in us.
I just want everyone here…
Let’s just do this for real.
Let’s just close our eyes for just 10 seconds, and I want you to think, actually visualize the people who helped you get here today.
Let’s just do it for 10 seconds.
I’ll time you on my vintage Rolex.
Let’s go.
Just close your eyes and see their faces.
As many as you can remember.
Try to remember what they did for you, how they helped you.
Okay, now I want you guys to think of your enemies.
Think of your enemies.
Think of everyone you hate.
Think of how much better you are than everyone else.
Think of everyone who said you going to Harvard would amount to nothing.
And who are you thinking of when I asked you to think of people who helped you?
I mean, for me, it was my wife, Hannah.
It was my mom, my dad, my sister, Trevor Noah, who stuck his neck out to hire me on “The Daily Show” because he felt strongly that the show needed an Asian voice on it.
Yes, a Black man helped an Asian man get into America through affirmative action.
And throughout satire and seven years of speaking truth to power, we help Donald Trump get elected.
Twice.
Whoops.
Good luck with that.
But remember just how you felt when you were thinking of the people who helped you.
And now it’s time for you to go out there and be a person who someone else thinks of fondly as having helped them.
Because one day soon, I promise you, some kids will be asking you for advice for after they graduate, and you can say:
“Be kind, be joyful.
But for the love of God, help me destroy these machines first.”
Thank you for having me.
You guys are awesome.
Congrats to everybody, the students, and the parents, and the faculty.
Thanks for having me here.
Take care, Harvard.
