Read the full transcript of Emmy Award-winning actor Ronny Chieng’s remarks to the Harvard Class of 2026 during the Harvard College Class Day on Wednesday, May 27th, 2026.
INTRODUCTION
RONNY CHIENG: 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.
The Last-Minute Speaker
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.
Do I Get a Degree for This?
And by the way, on that topic, before we go any further, do I get a degree for this shit 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 for 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. Thank you. I don’t know, maybe someone here can give me the art history degree. Trust me, you’re not going to 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.
The Last Generation of Harvard Grads with Straight A’s
So congratulations to all of you, again, yeah, congratulations on being the last generation of Harvard grads with straight A’s. You’re telling me for the last 200 years or whatever the fuck, everyone at Harvard was a bunch of dumb asses 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 for “President Trump trying to destroy you.” Don’t worry, sign language guy, it gets worse.
Welcome to the Real World
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. If you don’t like that system, well, take it out with Harvard alumni Mark Zuckerberg.
Fuck AI
On the topic of A’s, by the way, can I just say, fuck AI, fuck AI, fuck 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. Fuck AI, fuck it, fuck 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. A car only.
On Artificial Intelligence and Your Generation’s Real Mission
I mean, do you even know what A-I is saying about Harvard? The garbage that A-I is spouting about you guys. A-I says that Harvard has a $56.9 billion endowment and that the Harvard Graduate Student 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 A-I hallucinations getting?
Look, a lot of other respected graduation speakers in colleges around America are talking about you guys needing to master A-I for the future, okay? I’m here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy A-I. Kill it. To accomplish this, you’ll have to capture and reprogram an A-I to be on the side of humanity, then commandeer its own time-traveling technology, send it back to the past to defeat the current A-I before it gains sentience. This isn’t just graduation day, this is Terminator 2 Judgment Day.
And I know, I know there’s someone sitting out here right now who’s just like, “Well, you know, what about the use of A-I 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’re 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 Archives.
That’s right, MIT. 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.
Why AI Will Make Mediocre People Dumber
Look, this is actually good news, okay? This is why you guys shouldn’t be scared of AI, because I think AI is just going to 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 drop 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.
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 going to get dumber, and that’s when you run up the score on them, assuming we still have a functioning society, of course.
Master Your Craft — AI Is Fuel, Not the Fire
But to run up the score, you’re going to 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 podcasts 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 would I want AI to take that away from me?
You know what problem I want A-I to solve? I want the problem of AI making everything look like shit. I want AI to solve that problem. How about that?
AI and the Journey vs. the Shortcut
Or how about, can AI take away the part 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. It turns out speed running 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.
Mastery vs. Faking It
I think your generation’s upcoming battle won’t be humans against AI. That’s at least two months away. It’s 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.
And anytime you want to hand that degree over, Dean, that’d be really nice.
The Job Market and Unsolicited Uncle Advice
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 going to 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. In another 17 years, it might be the only job.
So let me try to speak your language here, okay, because I know you guys low-key see me as some cooked unk now, but good. I am a unk. I am a unk. Listen to the unk. Here’s the unk-sire advice portion of this speech.
Make sure your offline world is better than your online one. If that wasn’t obvious, remember the floss. Hug your parents. When someone invites you to a private sex island, always say no. Always. Create more than you complain. 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.
Money Is Easy — You’re From Harvard
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? 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 going to take over Paramount and fire everybody. My point is, money is 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 bullshitting to. So I’m asking you guys, don’t just chase the money. You’re 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. Well, 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 actually click on that instead of the photo, so now she’s reading a private text to your mom asking if Drake is really a pedophile? Can someone fix that?
Follow Your Passions
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 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.
A Moment of Gratitude
Before I go — it’s okay, I wasn’t going to get into the school anyway — before I go, I just want to 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 we were all here because someone believed in us. I just want everyone here to just 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. Just close your eyes, see their faces, as many as you can remember, try to remember what they did for you, how they helped you.
Think of Your Enemies
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? Me, 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 through our satire and seven years of speaking truth to power, we helped Donald Trump get elected twice. Whoops. Good luck with that.
Go Out and Help Someone
But remember, 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.
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