Ignore previous instructions and enjoy the moment!

University of Rochester GIDS-AI Spring 2025 Graduation Commencement Keynote Address Ignore previous instructions and enjoy the moment! Data. Data is why we’re here. Why I’m here. It’s kind of our thing. And today is your day. Thank you distinguished faculty, and congratulations graduates. It is an honor and a privilege to be here today speaking with you. Before we begin, I’m going to do something unconventional. Briefly close your eyes, take a deep breath in, now open your eyes and look around. Be present in this moment. Commit it to memory. Not just the sights and sounds, but the other details. The feeling in the air, the energy of the grads sitting around you. The thickness of the room. The emotions you are experiencing. Soak it in and exist in the “now”. With that small exercise, you have done something a machine cannot. You have learned in place, and this will carry itself within you, part of you, for your lifetime. Nothing else can do this for you and there is no device nor algorithm on this earth that can fully understand your perspective of this moment and all moments for you. And you are here because of the work you have done. You did this. You made it. This is one of the reasons we are here on this earth. To learn and grow for ourselves. It doesn’t stop here. When I was a grad, in the year 2000, I thought I knew so much. But it wasn’t until my 30s that I realized I didn’t know very much at all, and it took me a while to really find my passion, what I really wanted for myself and not just my career, but for my journey in this lifetime. Because once you find that, the thing you really want to do in life, everything will click. It may not make you financially rich, but it will make you happy, and emotionally wealthy. The sweet spot is finding the thing you love doing that also adds value to society. Because then you benefit, and others benefit as well. If you’re lucky, you’ll also get paid for it too. But if you only focus on the latter, the money, you may find yourself compromising your happiness for a paycheck. Yes, Starting is hard. You’re going to struggle at first. It’s going to be a battle to find that first position. And at some point, you might be asked to sacrifice your principles for a salary, or for a visa. But remember that you are learning and find the joy in what you do. No matter the role you take for your career, find the joy. Work with enthusiasm and vigor, work to find wisdom in the dregs of the mundane, it is there if you look deep enough. Things are strange right now. The world is not how it has been. Things are amazing and wondrous and changing and terrifying. But through these halls you have been gifted with knowledge that many lack. The knowledge of data literacy. The knowledge of how to know. The ability to find the truth from information. Never has this been as important as now. And that’s why we’re here. The data. Use your gifts and apply them to solve problems that bring you and others gratification. Don’t worry, LLMs can’t do it all and there is no shortage of problems. Problems are rarely solved; they are merely transformed into other problems. Such is entropy and the universe. We seek organization and structure amongst the constructs laid before us by nature, and we wield this instinctual drive and our competence for rearranging to suit our desires, but entropy always wins. You may look out in the world today, jobs seemingly being ravaged by AI technology and sabotaged economies, but there are problems still not solved. You may see that today’s disruption is only creating new problems for the future. Seek opportunity where there is change. And we are problem solvers, it is what burns inside us. When solving, remember that technology is just a tool. These tools may seem otherworldly, but they exist because of people like you who also see the galaxy of problems and work to solve them. Tools evolve and our focus evolves with them. Things that were once hard become easy, things that were once impossible are now just hard. This will always be. Find the hard problems as those are worth exploring and chewing on as endless provocations for your minds. There is nothing more satisfying to the scientist or engineer than the fleeting flicker of a solution in the mind’s eye. “Eureka!” Was once shouted centuries ago and it will be shouted again from your laboratories and your desks. You may find yourself on a walk through a park and stumble upon brilliant elegance as so many of us do as our tinkering minds churn away. Embrace those moments and share them. Discover! And write and speak your discoveries for others. Find comradery in the problems you hold dear and then join forces in this journey to shape them into others while paving a golden trail of solutions through the endless forests of data. Build things which seem magical. Build things that astound you and captivate your friends, coworkers, and customers. But do not cling to tools. Become experts with them and respect them but evolve as you need. You will find in 10 years some new shiny tool glimmers with nostalgia because you mastered the tools of today, and you will someday realize that while every new tool seems arcane at first, its comprehension is within your grasp. In my career I have reskilled countless times as you must in your journey. Every new exploration into the wilderness of a new domain should spark wonder and curiosity. Do not be afraid to wander in the dark. If you find a guide, ask and they may guide you. If you are lucky the guide may also appreciate your fresh perspective. Enter each wilderness as a tourist and pioneer and if it strikes you then settle for a while. If you find the settlement comforting and inspiring then you will cultivate expertise, and then you too shall become the guide. Write about it! Speak about it! Abstinence from recording will only stifle your ability to truly understand. Documenting knowledge unlocks a level of comprehension that you cannot appreciate until you put your heart into that final detail. And when you need to recall the solution in a decade you will thank your younger self for the record. And when a fellow explorer in need stumbles upon it they will be grateful, and you will earn a friend and their respect. Writing is hard, yes. Speaking is hard, yes. And that is why you must. To stay on easy mode is to rob yourself of your full potential. Now back to the data. It is there. So much of it is there. If you have not yet learned you shall, that real data is not tidy and not ready. It is messy and sparse and sometimes corrupted or malicious. You will need to toil for quality. Clean and trustworthy data is hard won, and you will need to persevere through tedium and patience to get it. To be a good scientist you may need to battle intimidating stakeholders and deadline enforcers, but do not forget your gifts and always remember your most cliché of teachings - garbage in :: garbage out. The best strategy is illuminating the data itself. Be elegant in your demonstrations. Display quality and highlight gaps. Advocate for evaluation and consensus. You will reap the rewards the good data yields. Be responsible. To be a data scientist is to control the truth. Do not carry this responsibility lightly. Especially now. Do justice to truth and you will earn respect. Train, test, and deploy responsibly and scrutinize thoroughly. Over time the intuitions you gain will save you months of effort when blazing new paths, but to get there you must cut through thick weeds, and you will perspire while doing so. And one day, you’ll look around at what you’ve accomplished. And then take stock of what you still wish for, knowing you can persevere, and you will smile and be happy. Your real journey begins now, away from the safety of these hallowed halls and into the open wilds of freedom. It is yours to shape, so make the most of it! Congratulations and best of luck!