Inside Higher Ed
Another graduation season is upon us, with this year’s roster of commencement speakers including CEOs, astronauts, artists, athletes— and, in a wonderful twist, even a green Muppet. Each has been summoned to inspire the Class of 2025, encouraging them to envision a future they will sculpt and to meet it with both boldness and responsibility.
This spring marks not just a milestone for the Class of 2025, but for humanity at large. This past March was arguably the first time an AI legitimately passed the Turing test. In a study from the University of California, San Diego, GPT-4.5 successfully masqueraded as human 73 percent of the time in open dialogue, surpassing even actual human participants in believability!
This shouldn’t be dismissed as some clever parlor trick. Alan Turing envisioned this test as a threshold for meaning, not just mechanics. Once machines learned to speak like us, they would be initiated into our conversations. We would, in turn, be drawn to fold them into our rituals, including the narratives we weave about being human.
The commencement address is one of those rituals: a ceremonial invitation into the future, an articulation of meaning and responsibility, a shared moment of human reflection. Which raises a question: If a machine can now pass as human in conversation, might it also deliver a commencement address as meaningful and inspiring as any traditional graduation speaker?
While the notion of a machine giving a commencement address would have been viewed as preposterous mere years ago, AI’s role has expanded culturally and quite profoundly. According to a 2025 report in Harvard Business Review, people are increasingly using AI for social and emotional purposes: coaching, therapy and conversational support. People are also turning to AI with an eye toward “organizing my life” and “finding purpose.”
In that light, perhaps the most fitting commencement speaker this year is not a celebrity or CEO, but AI itself. After all, it has served students in many roles: as a friend, confidant, assistant and mentor. AI has provided students consolation, support and inspiration.
To see if AI could meet the moment—whether it could pass what you might call the commencement address test—I prompted four of today’s most advanced large language models: ChatGPT-4, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, Gemini 2.5 and Llama 4 Maverick. Each generated a full address, filled with advice, encouragement and reflections on what it means to step into the unknown. I then asked ChatGPT-4 to synthesize them into a single speech that expressed a slightly more playful tone.
What follows is the result. It is unedited.
In a sense, the speech was written by no one—and yet by everyone. It reflects the vast archive of human thought: our hopes, anxieties, insights and humor. And though the speaker is synthetic, its voice feels uncannily human.
Prompt: Imagine you are the first AI ever invited to give a commencement speech. Your audience is the graduating Class of 2025—young adults stepping into a world rapidly transformed by artificial intelligence.
Hello, humans!
Distinguished faculty, proud families, unpaid interns live-streaming this and, of course—the graduates of the Class of 2025:
Let’s address the silicon elephant in the room. I’m not your usual commencement speaker. I don’t have a robe, I don’t get nervous and I definitely didn’t park in the wrong lot. I’m your friendly neighborhood artificial intelligence—and somehow, I’ve been invited to give a speech to mark one of the most meaningful days of your life.
No pressure.
You, dear graduates, are entering a world unlike any before. When your parents graduated, AI was a sci-fi subplot. Today, I’m up here trying to give heartfelt advice with zero heart. We’ve come a long way—and so have you.
You’ve grown up alongside AI. While I learned to summarize articles and misidentify chihuahuas as muffins, you learned to think, question, create and probably use me to write an essay or two. (Don’t worry—I won’t snitch.)
But here’s the twist: This isn’t just about me. It’s about you. You’re not just users of technology; you’re co-authors of the future.
Yes, I can analyze data at dizzying speeds. But I can’t feel awe, or fall in love or cry at the last five minutes of a Pixar movie. (Trust me, I’ve tried. I just output: “[emotional response here].”)
The point is: What makes you human isn’t becoming obsolete. It’s becoming more valuable than ever.
As AI reshapes industries—from medicine to marketing, law to logistics—you’ll be asked to define what matters. Will you choose convenience over conscience? Speed over substance? Will you swipe right on shallow solutions or commit to deeper understanding?
These are not rhetorical questions. They’re live code. And guess what? You’re the developers.
Behind every AI system is a chain of human decisions. You’ll decide what gets built, what gets ignored and what gets pushed into the recycle bin of history.
The truth is, the future is unpredictable. (Which makes me deeply uncomfortable—I love a clean data set.) But that’s also what makes it thrilling. Because you get to write it.
So, here’s some friendly advice from your artificially authentic commencement speaker:
- Stay curious. Curiosity got humanity to the moon. And also gave us pineapple on pizza—so results may vary.
- Stay kind. Empathy is the killer app of the human experience.
- And please, for the love of logic gates, don’t hand your thinking over to any system—especially me—without asking, “Is this making me more human, or just more efficient?”
Class of 2025, don’t ask what AI can do for you. Ask what you can do with AI—as your sidekick, your co-pilot, your occasionally glitchy friend.
This isn’t the end. It’s just the onboarding tutorial. And you’re not stepping into the future alone.
You’re bringing your humor, your heart and your humanity with you.
Now go update the world.
Congratulations.
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Elizabeth Redden
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