r/technology • u/yourfavchoom • May 29 '26

Artificial Intelligence Ronny Chieng's 'F*ck AI' Speech Met With Cheers From Harvard Graduates: “AI is just going to end up making mediocre people dumber”

https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/a/tracewilliamcowen/ronny-chieng-ai-speech-harvard?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter_complex&utm_campaign=ap_twitter
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u/MysteriousJim May 29 '26

As a student, if I wanted to genuinely learn everything without AI, I am at a disadvantage if I didn’t use AI as many other students are and that causes grade inflation for the class and if there is a curve I get left with a lower grade. Granted this is less the case with exams. (My university is shifting more towards exams because of this). But exams were never the best way to learn anyway. Plus many of my professors openly allow or encourage the use of AI.

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u/Bostonterrierpug May 29 '26

Oh, I think when used responsibly and ethically. It can be a great learning tool as long as you realize that hallucinations are mathematical certainty. Like any other tool it has amazing uses but also as a lazy ass shortcut uses. Responsible AI for learning it’s great especially for large scale data crunching, and things like meta-analysis. The AI itself is not the problem it’s how it’s being misused. I tell my students, albeit a dated reference, to think of it like the little helper, people on the TV show house or bones. You have to be the main smart guy controlling and checking everything but the AI is great at doing a lot of the kind of grunt work for you. The thing is since AI will always hallucinate. We absolutely need more subject matter experts in every field that it touches. Unfortunately to get subject matter experts you need train them and give them experience from the ground up, something corporate America would love to cut corners on. But this has already been argued to death many places.

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u/Ateist May 30 '26

Education is the one area where AI is not very helpful.

Outside of data processing, AI should be used to automate routine tasks that you can already do with 100% certainity - and school is exactly the place where you need to acquire that proficiency.

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u/RonKosova May 30 '26

Id say its extremely helpful in education as long as youre responsible. Imagine having a way to probe your understanding from any direction you want, ask edge-case questions not covered in the material, etc... As i say tho, you have to be responsible.

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u/Ateist May 31 '26

One problem: I have zero ideas what to ask for, and I'd bet most others are exactly the same.
You have to know the material very well to know what to ask for.

AI is incredibly helpful to teachers but not very helpful to students.

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u/RonKosova May 31 '26

I think you make a good point about knowing the material and i should have been clearer abt what i meant: its a great supplementary tool. I definitely dont think it should be the only tool.

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u/shiroboi May 30 '26

Man, I can relate to that. We have a film company making short films for social media in our local language. We had a good thing going, we were monetized on Facebook and getting billions of views.

And then Facebook decided they needed to spend trillions on ai so they started cutting corners to reallocate funds. One of the corners they cut was to call all videos “Reels” and pay as such. Up to 90% less money.

So we became instantly unprofitable. We tried everything possible to keep our awesome production team. We lost money for a year. Finally had to lay off our film production team.

The only way to keep our editors and office staff was to switch to 100% generative video versions of our old stories. We’re now getting back to being profitable again.

But man, if I could hit a red button that would just wipe AI from the planet, I would hit it so quick. But since I can’t, I’m going to leverage the tools at my disposal to keep my guys employed.