Jerry Seinfeld: ‘Privilege Today Seems To Be the Worst Thing You Can Have’

SEINFELD: “Privilege is a word that has taken quite a beating lately. Privilege today seems to be the worst thing you can have. I would like to take a moment to defend it. Again, a lot of you are thinking, ‘I can’t believe they invited this guy.’ Too late. I say, use your privilege. I grew up a Jewish boy from New York. That is a privilege if you want to be a comedian.
(Cheering and Applause)
Thanks. If I messed up a funny story around my relatives, they would go, ‘That’s not how you tell that joke. The prostitute has to be behind the drapes when the wife comes in.’ You went to Duke. That is an unbelievable privilege. I now have an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degree from Duke University. And if I can figure out a way to use that, I will. I haven’t figured anything out yet. I think it’s pretty much as useful in real life as this outfit I’m wearing. But so what? I’ll take it. My point is, we’re embarrassed about things we should be proud of, and proud of things we should be embarrassed about. When I was writing my TV series —
(Applause)
Thanks. What a crowd. So, on my staff in the 90s, we had a lot of Harvard guys. They were fantastic, but I could never understand why these guys were so embarrassed about being from Harvard. They would never talk about it. They would never mention it. I’m not talking about Harvard now. I’m talking about the way it used to be. You’re never going to believe this. Harvard used to be a great place to go to school. Now it’s Duke.
(Cheering and Applause)
You didn’t fake your fabulous education. You earned it. Be proud of it. Don’t just drop it on people right before you serve in pickleball. Okay? ‘Duke ‘24, coming at you.’ But if it comes up, if someone asks, don’t say it looking down, stubbing your toe in the dirt. When someone asks, where did you go to school? You say, ‘I went to Duke.’ Watch them take that uncomfortable hard swallow. AI, on the other hand, is the most embarrassing thing we’ve ever invented in mankind’s time on Earth. Oh, so you can’t do the work? Is that what you’re telling me? You can’t figure it out? This seems to be the justification of AI, ‘I couldn’t do it.’ This is something to be embarrassed about. The ad campaign for ChatGPT GPT should be the opposite of Nike. You just can’t do it.
(Laughter)
Making fake brains is risky. Frankenstein proved that. He was so dumb, he thought a monster needed a sport jacket. It’s not a wine tasting. We’re terrorizing villagers. No one’s going to tell you. I’m sorry, Mr. Stein, it’s jackets only this evening. What I like is we’re smart enough to invent it, dumb enough to need it, and still so stupid we can’t figure out if we did the right thing. Making work easier — this is the problem. So obsessed with getting to the answer, completing the project, producing a result which are all valid things, but not where the richness of the human experience lies. The only two things you ever need to pay attention to in life are work and love, things that are self-justified in the experience and who cares about the result. Stop rushing to what you perceive as some valuable endpoint. Learn to enjoy the expenditure of energy that may or may not be on the correct path.”