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This graduation season, many entrepreneurs have raised eyebrows for delivering commencement speeches praising AI. Given the desolate state of the job market that graduates are entering, these messages are understandably met with boos, as they seem to foreshadow the elimination of many human-led positions. Luckily, other figures are pushing back, delivering inspiring words for the graduating class. First was comedian Ronnie Chieng, who told his Harvard audience to “destroy AI.” Now, CNN journalist and analyst Fareed Zakaria praised the abilities of the human brain in the face of AI during his commencement speech at Bard College.
The journalist said that every generation has confronted transformative technologies that seem destined to overwhelm humanity, from the printing press to the internet. Still no other seems to be as feared as AI due to its wide array of applications, such as writing essays, diagnosing diseases, and conversing with alarming fluency. “So people naturally ask, ‘What will be left for human beings to do?’ But perhaps that’s the wrong question,” Zakaria said. “The better question is what does AI tell us about all the things we humans already do and that are distinctive and irreplaceable?”
“First, consider the sheer miracle of the human brain,” he continued. “A human brain weighs about 3 pounds. It runs on roughly 20 watts of power. About the amount of energy you need to dimly light a refrigerator bulb. 20 watts. Now, training some of the most advanced AI systems in the world requires data centers consuming hundreds of millions of watts of electricity, enough to power entire cities. These facilities stretch across hundreds of acres filled with giant servers, massive cooling systems, miles and miles of cables. Meanwhile, your 3-pound brain is sitting quietly inside your skull using less energy than a laptop charger.”
Despite its size, Zakaria praises how our brains can still outperform machines thanks to our unique abilities to understand emotions. “Machines are astonishingly good at analysis. But we humans do more. We live in a complex world inhabited by other humans. Human beings are social animals. Aristotle told us 2,000 years ago. The computer scientist Yan Lun has pointed out that human intelligence is not just computation. It is embodied experience, social understanding, emotional cognition layered over millions of years of evolution. So perhaps we should stop imagining human beings as inferior computers. We are not computers at all.”
Zakaria then presents the case for art. “Art is just as much about the human being behind it than about the final product. We relate to art because it comes from another human being,” he said. “Artisanal products are less smooth and polished than machine-made ones, but they are increasingly valued because they were made by the shaky, irregular human hand. We humans don’t always seek perfection. Sometimes we seek authenticity. Sometimes we seek soul, a term we can barely define, but we know when we feel it. Sometimes we just want a connection with another human whom we want to know deeply, intimately, warts and all.”
That’s why Zakaria rallied the graduates to champion HI instead of AI. “HI—Human intelligence, human imagination, human inspiration, human interconnection,” he said. “Celebrate the gloriously imperfect human minds because our imperfections are not bugs in some systems code.”
CNN journalist and analyst Fareed Zakaria praised the abilities of the human brain in the face of AI during his commencement speech at Bard College.
Fareed Zakaria: Instagram
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