A collection of features and graduate profiles covering Harvard’s 375th Commencement.
For better or worse, the rapid rise of artificial intelligence coincided with the Class of 2026’s undergraduate years, Harvard President Alan Garber said in his Baccalaureate address Tuesday. It is now up to graduates, he said, to decide how to live with it.
“There will always be value in toiling laboriously to reach new levels of understanding,” Garber said. “When you do so, you do more than celebrate the exquisite potential of human beings; you elevate the meaning of your singular existence.”
In November 2022 — just months after members of the Class of 2026 began at Harvard — the release of ChatGPT launched a new era of scientific discoveries and advances in productivity alongside fresh fears about job losses and the value of human labor. But Garber, who graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude 50 years ago, reminded the seniors and their loved ones assembled in Tercentenary Theatre that this is far from the first time a novel technology brought with it novel anxieties.
He cited a 1903 opinion piece in the Pittsburgh Gazette in which a writer — “Someone we could now call an influencer,” Garber said — fretted about tethered balloons in Switzerland bringing tourists to the height of the tallest Alps in as little as 10 minutes. Having attained that awesome perspective with little effort, the tourists could gaze down with derision at the alpinists toiling through great difficulty up the snowy mountains.
