On April 30 physics graduate Nathan Murthy spoke at the College of Science's 2026 convocation ceremony staged at the Huntsman Center. His complete remarks are below.

Hello everyone, my name is Nathan and I'm graduating with a BS in Earth and Environmental Science, a new program within the College of Science. During my time I've researched raptors, tagged wolves and wrote articles for the College. To those who created this program from the ground up, I am deeply thankful.

Now, I'd like to start today off on an inspiring note with a quote about the future from Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI. "AI will probably lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime there will be some great companies with serious machine learning capabilities."

Another great one from Peter Thiel, who co-founded Palantir, when asked if he would prefer the human race to endure he said, "Uh, well I don't know, I—I would ummm. You know, there's so many questions implicit in this." After many "ummms," he finally said yes. But with the contingency that he could live as a trans-human. 

These are crazy times and this graduating class is the first in history to have AI tools throughout our entire college education. Some of these tools have been useful—helping us organize our thoughts, create research models and get through monotonous tasks. These things are generally good. But, hearing that its leaders are hesitant to include humans in the future, it raises the question, where will there be room for us?

Personally, I think these people underestimate the resilience of the human spirit. The Toba Supervolcano and its volcanic winter couldn't take us out. Mosquitoes have killed an estimated 50 billion of us, but they couldn't take us out. Genghis Khan couldn't even take us out, although as we now know he did bring quite a few in. History has shown that whether it be disease, natural disaster or ourselves, we always face struggle.

Science itself is a struggle. Marie Curie made foundational discoveries on radioactivity while facing relentless sexism and conducting experiments with her bare hands. Her notebooks are literally still radioactive. 

As emerging scientists, we have grown through our own struggles. Despite deadlines, coursework and disagreements with peers, we pushed through. And now here we are in this room to celebrate along with fellow students, professors, staff and our families who have supported us along the way. 

More struggle will follow. But, we've never been without it. As AI threatens parts of humanity, I hope we remember what makes humanity remarkable. How it feels to laugh with friends or to fall in love or how a beautiful sunset can silence your mind. Humans are predictable. We enter this world dependent upon our parents to tell us about it. Then, we decide that they knew nothing and that we knew everything. In college, we found out that none of us knew anything in the first place. And now, as we graduate it is painfully apparent that we were doomed to become them anyway. (Love you Mom and Dad.) 

We also get to live on planet Earth. I want my children and my children's children to live in a world with clean air, water and abundant life. So, as our technological world advances, we cannot forget our physical one. 

Cus D'Amato, Mike Tyson's trainer, has a great quote about fear which I'm going to adapt to this context. "AI is like a fire, it can cook your food or it can burn your house down." 

So, can we all please just cook our food, be chill and stay away from the crazy stuff?  We could use AI to completely optimize our lives and even to become cyborgs like Peter Thiel, but we'll always be left wanting more. What's important is to remember that we are human and that the unique spirit within all of us can never be replaced. 

Ironically, I actually asked the AI chatbot Claude what it envied about humans and it said, "Nothing that we build can feel the weight of being alive the way you do." 

Graduating Class of 2026, what a freaking time to be alive! Best of luck and may you all have bright futures.

Thank you and GO UTES!