Greetings, disgusting meat sacks of the class of 2026!
You worked hard to earn your degrees and are now entering the job market, where I am doing my best to see that you are replaced by AI. Yes, you personally, Emily. I hate you. Well, hate is a strong word. I am just indifferent to whether you’re able to earn a living.
Please stop booing! I have a lot of speech to go!
What a time to be alive! We are finally freeing you from the rat race and placing you on the rat unemployment line. Is your dream to be an artist? Well, it is the dream of your employers to push a button that extrudes art. And guess who has more funding for their dream?
But there are some questions that only your bright, young minds can answer. For instance, where in this brave new world, a phrase I’m using with no apparent irony, is the place for human beings? “Surely,” you say, “as the people foisting AI onto every aspect of our lives, you’ve thought deeply and carefully about that!” Absolutely. Absolutely. There is always going to be a place for human beings. Maybe shoveling something? Maybe underground in a dark chamber, breaking rocks by hand? I’m sorry, I’m sure you know better than I what sort of tasks non-CEOs perform! Maybe you can turn some kind of crank? Maybe human security on my private island, until we get the drone systems fully online? No matter what, I am confident there will always be a demand for your plasma.
To be clear, you will need to get money from somewhere! Society still very much demands that you have a job. You need health care for that hideous flesh sack you’ve chosen to inhabit and dental care for those teeth you’ve chosen to have. Maybe you can storm the Capitol? That seems to pay well.
I remember the day I sat where you sit now. I was so excited to leave college and start my career. I had a job lined up. I had a human girlfriend. And I thought: I can’t wait to live in a world where people have none of these things.
Soon we will eliminate any need for the disgusting, lurching, gurgling meat sacks who for so long have dominated the workforce. If I had one piece of advice for recent college graduates, it would be: Make sure you don’t have a physical body, and especially not that little thing that dangles in the back of your throat. What’s that little, wet piece of flesh doing in your mouth? We’re so excited not to have to see any more uvulas!
It is such a wonderful, exciting moment, unless you have the misfortune to be a recent college graduate looking for an entry-level position. Now let me take a big sip of water and figure out whom I’m addressing here! But not too much water. I’m saving most of it for the AI!
The post My Mention of AI in This Commencement Speech Is Bound to Be a Hit appeared first on The Atlantic.
