In his remarks during the University\u2019s Baccalaureate ceremony on Tuesday, President Alan M. Garber told the College Class of 2026 about a backlash over a revolutionary technology that, its detractors feared, would usher in a new \u201cage of little effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
The twist: it was the hot air balloon.<\/p>\n
In 1903, Garber recounted, a tethered balloon appeared as a tourist attraction in the French Alps; a critic for the Pittsburgh Gazette bemoaned that riders could get a summit view of Mont Blanc without facing the same dangers or exertion as the mountaineers toiling below. Along with elevators, railroads, and telegraphs, the critic wrote, the balloons represented \u201ca mania for simplification,\u201d poised to leave \u201cthe indelible stamp of melancholy\u201d on a brand-new century.<\/p>\n
To Garber, the parallels to the present debate around artificial intelligence are clear\u2014and particularly meaningful for the Class of 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a few months after your first year began, ChatGPT was released,\u201d he told the crowd of graduating seniors in Tercentenary Theater, spurring a rapid advance of AI usage that \u201chas been, for better and worse, the backdrop of your Harvard experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Garber, the hot air balloon is both a telling precedent and an apt metaphor for AI\u2019s possibilities. When it comes to scientific progress and discovery, he argued, there are some horizons that can\u2019t be explored without the aid of new technologies.<\/p>\n
Artificial intelligence, he said, \u201ccan accelerate the pace of discovery and innovation, revolutionizing how we undertake research and lifting humanity to new heights\u201d\u2014and rendering some other tools and skills obsolete.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are the landscapes you just don\u2019t need to explore anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cI may still be able to read a slide rule, and I can use a paper map, but those skills long ago lost most of their value thanks to calculators and GPS. That is what it is to live as progress is being made.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in the face of that progress, Garber reminded the crowd, humans have choices\u2014about where to exert our efforts and struggle, and where to seek and embrace the unexpected.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will always be value in \u2018toiling laboriously,\u2019 to reach new levels of understanding,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you do so, you do more than celebrate the exquisite potential of human beings; you elevate the meaning of your singular existence.\u201d<\/p>\n
AI has been a common subject at commencement ceremonies across the U.S. this season, and critics of the technology have sometimes been a vocal presence. Speakers lauding the use of artificial intelligence were booed by graduates at the University of Central Florida, the University of Arizona, and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
At the start of his address, Garber acknowledged the risks of praising AI, while joking that he considered using the large language model Claude to write his speech. \u201cClaude and I have been working on my remarks for many days,\u201d he quipped. \u201cBut\u2014given how Commencement season has been unfolding\u2014we decided it would be better for me to go it alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also warned against passivity in the face of AI-driven algorithms that increasingly control what people read and encounter. \u201cYou will not chance upon something that truly delights and surprises you if comfortable curation becomes your way of being,\u201d he said. \u201cYou must be open to the possibility of being wowed by something that you did not expect to find.\u201d<\/p>\n
In closing, Garber offered wishes to the class that \u201cthe journeys you take, regardless of the balloons at your disposal, bring you happiness and satisfaction.\u201d<\/p>\n