Womp, womp. Debbie Downer is back. And she’s talking about AI.
On Sunday, Rachel Dratch — the “SNL” alum currently starring in Broadway’s “Rocky Horror Show” revival— gave a commencement speech to graduates at Dartmouth College.
Like many commencement speakers this season, Dratch brought up the impact of AI on careers. Unlike business leaders including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt who were booed after making optimistic remarks about the technology, Dratch got her audience laughing.
She did it with help from one of her most famous “SNL” characters.
“Quite an achievement graduating from Dartmouth,” Dratch said as Debbie Downer, before launching into one of the persona’s standard depressing non sequiturs. “Of course, thanks to AI, there won’t be any jobs left, so congrats to all on your mandatory gap years.”
She deadpanned into the camera and shrugged. A trombone played two descending, burbling notes — the musical equivalent of: “Womp, womp.”
“It’s inspiring to see all your fresh minds ready to take on our world,” she said. “Sadly, due to the construction of data centers and the impending water wars, the most useful college majors now are foraging and hand-to-hand combat.”
The trombone warbled into an even more discordant sound.
“There you go,” Dratch said as the gloomy musical cue landed.
AI has become a recurring character at commencement ceremonies this year, arriving as graduates enter a job market already shadowed by questions about the technology.
That tension is also contributing to AI’s popularity problem in the US. A Pew Research Center poll, released on Wednesday, found that only 16% of Americans surveyed were “very or somewhat positive” about AI’s impact on daily life, while 40% said they were “very or somewhat negative.”
Moments before the speech, Dratch — who graduated from Dartmouth in 1988 — received an honorary doctorate from the university.
She got the degree in the same amount of time it would take to prompt an LLM.
“Not to brag, but I am also earning a degree here today,” she said. “For most of you, that’s a bachelor of arts. For me, it’s a doctorate. For you, it took four long years. And for me, less than a minute. I guess I’m just a quick study.”
