Master’s Speech at the 2026 Commencement Dinner
Ormond College
Tuesday 3 March 2026
You are some of the smartest young people in Australia and the world. You must be, because you got into the University of Melbourne and Ormond College. Use that intelligence wisely and responsibly. Grow it. Develop it. Expand it. Share it.
Dr Areti (Ari) Metuamate, Master and Head of Ormond College
IntroductionGood evening everybody.It is wonderful to welcome you all to the start of a new academic year. The Commencement Dinner is a very special occasion, representing new beginnings but also continuity and renewal for students and staff alike. It is a moment to reflect on our shared purpose and to look ahead to the opportunities that lie before us – as we renew our commitment to educational excellence.I can see your eyes glazing over. Perhaps I am boring you. I hope so, as I was reading an introduction to a college commencement speech written by ChatGPT. So – naturally – my words were bland, generic, formulaic, and more or less meaningless. Anybody could deliver those words and bore any group of students in any College.Perhaps, to be fair, I could have given ChatGPT some better prompts. But there are still limits to what these tools can do. ChatGPT is not very good at sincerity and it’s not very good at specifics.Welcome and Welcome BackSo, you might have guessed that I want to talk with you all about AI tonight – about the things it can give us, and the things it can take from us, if we let it. But first, I’m going to start this speech again. Your commencement dinner is important, and hopefully memorable, so I want to do it right.Welcome to the 2026 academic year! It is a real privilege to be Master of the largest (and in my humble opinion) best college in Australia. I am so proud to be a member of a community with such amazing students, dedicated staff, impressive fellows, and outstanding alumni. Commencement Dinner is a highlight of our year at Ormond, and this is the 145th commencement dinner of some sort that we have held here (although not in this dining hall because it was launched in 1893). Tonight’s Formal Hall was organised by the one-and-only Sophie Simpson, and the meal tonight was overseen by our head chef, the singular Lisa Tippins. To them and their teams, and the cleaning and maintenance teams who get this place set up, thank you very much!So, let me now turn to the topic at hand.There are many benefits to what’s happening in AIAs you know, we are in the early stages of a technological revolution – the AI revolution. Its impacts are already significant, but they are going to be even more profound. AI is changing many things across all industries and professions, and entire workforces are literally transforming before our eyes. There are so many really positive things. We’re hearing a lot about the ways that AI can run system simulations and predict equipment failures – preventing all sorts of industrial hazards and catastrophes.And there’s enormous potential in the ways that AI can analyse huge data-sets, which will help people in finance, healthcare, engineering and many other areas. There’s been a lot of talk in the medical world about the ways AI is helping doctors analyse medical imaging and improve diagnostics for health conditions. Another example: it’s amazing to think about how AI helps surgeons with pre-operation planning by generating 3D models of patients’ anatomy (not to mention, the real-time analysis and support surgeons can now use during procedures.)But think carefully about how you use itBut like all shiny new tools, there are downsides too, and I’m sure you’re aware of them.A couple of weeks ago, there was a hair-raising article in the Weekend Australian about university students and the use of AI for assessments. A number of students and academics were interviewed for this story. Students talked about submitting coursework written by AI and swapping tips on how to make their essays sound less robotic. Academics talked about their dismay, and the insult, of marking essays written by robots. Using AI to write your essays is cheating, obviously. And it should go without saying that using AI to do your uni assignments devalues your degree and the university that awards the degree. It’s an own goal.You could almost feel a bit sorry for the students who were interviewed for that article.There was one student who admitted to having used AI for most of his coursework, and he made a comment along the lines of, ‘a random person walking down the street probably knows more about my subject area than I do’. That was quite shocking!Imagine starting your first job and not really knowing what you’re supposed to do because you didn’t actually do the work to get your degree. What if you don’t even know enough to give AI intelligent and relevant prompts?!Most of you are too smart, or too ambitious, to submit coursework written 100% by AI for your assessments. But I am sure almost everybody - staff here included - is using AI for some aspect of their work on some level, even if it’s just as an alternative to the good old Google search.AI is part of your now (and will be more so in your future)AI is not going away and you’ll absolutely, 100%, for certain be using it in many ways in your professional lives long after you graduate. So, given AI is here to stay we all need to think really hard about how we’re using AI during university, as well as how we’ll use it in the future.During your university studies, AI can be a very tempting shortcut for assessments. But there are advantages to taking the scenic (but maybe more strenuous) route. I really want you to think about how, and when, you use AI very carefully.Think twice when you enter a new search. It’s a slippery slope and you can end up becoming dependent.Even worse, you could be come intellectually lazy. Let me share an example. A year or so ago, before ChatGPT was really a ‘thing’, I marked a Master’s thesis of a student from another university. This thesis was by a student who got into a very competitive Master’s program which meant they had to have a first class honours degree or something like that to be admitted into it. So, they must have been pretty smart. The thesis was sound; it made sense and was argued reasonably well. But there was nothing particularly compelling about the way it was written. It kind of read as if the person writing it did not really care too much about the arguments they were making. Anyway, I marked it and gave it a simple pass, but found out later from the university research office that the Master’s degree was not awarded because they had got some new technology that detected the use of AI extensively throughout the thesis.It was such a shame that someone, clearly smart because they got into that Master’s program, who spent a whole year writing their thesis didn’t get the degree because they were lazy and used AI. Honestly, one of the worst things that can happen if you use AI too much is that you prevent yourself from truly wrestling with complex ideas and hard thinking that real scholarship requires. You might prevent yourself from making some very useful mistakes. Mistakes and misunderstandings are such an important part of how you learn. And I’m not talking so much about factual errors. I’m talking about more subtle kinds of mistakes: flaws in logic, critical oversights, your own biases and blind spots.In the longer term, if you’re overly reliant on AI, you can lose your capacity to evaluate things, to see biases, to notice oversights and logical failures - in your own work and in the work of others. Even if you end up using AI a lot in your working life - you’ll still need to be able to judge what is reputable, and you’ll definitely need to know when AI is ‘hallucinating’.You need critical judgement, knowledge, and context in order to do that.What are you here forUniversity is a place to tackle really difficult questions and engage serious academic material. And it’s also a place to fall short sometimes, and to try again. There can be huge satisfaction in that. Best of all, you get to do it with brilliant people – including other students and the Learning Team here at Ormond. The feedback you get from academics, through assessments and through tutorials, is so valuable. Nobody should rob themselves of the opportunity to try, to fall short, and to engage your tutors, lecturers, and our fabulous Learning Team, to learn from their constructive criticism and to access their brains and their expertise to develop your own.Now is the time to explore ideas, and to expand yourself intellectually.An example We look at applications for students and also applications for staff all the time. It’s usually easy to see which ones are written by ChatGPT. This is one of the reasons we increasingly rely on interviews.Cover letters written by ChatGPT are – like the start of my speech tonight – often bland and generic, with a formulaic syntax that’s usually easy to spot. Things like in a student application I read: “Coming to Ormond is not just something I am doing for me; it is about contributing to something larger than myself”. And this one from someone who applied for a job here recently, “To me, this role is more than a job; it is my chance to shape and build the future.”Now, I may be wrong, those may have been genuinely the words of those applicants, but they didn’t come across as such. The letters that stand out are the letters that only one person could have written. Letters that are original, that have some personality and that contain details that are unique to the writer.Of course, not everyone is great at writing, and not everybody needs to be great at writing, but we shouldn’t rely on AI too much for this kind of thing – for situations like a cover letter where you’re trying to introduce yourself to new people and open up new opportunities for yourself. I have heard of people using AI on dating apps and even just to text their friends! I mean, come on!Be yourself. And if you don’t know exactly who that is yet – that’s fine. Now is the perfect time to find out.College is one of the rare moments in life where you are surrounded by people who are curious, ambitious, and also searching for their place in the world.Make the most of this fabulous opportunity. Talk to people who think differently from you. Learn from people studying things you know nothing about.Take risks. Try new things. Fail. Try again. Fail again. And try again,Yes, AI will have a huge part in your university and college experience. But it is up to you to ensure you are using AI in a way that supports you on your learning journey, rather than diminishes it. AI should be used to help you to do the things that only you can do: think deeply, listen generously, disagree well. And then go on from here to make a meaningful difference in the world beyond the Ormond gates.AI and the Future of Learning Advisory GroupI want to use this speech as an opportunity to make an announcement. After discussions with the Learning Team, prompted by our wonderful academic advisor James Brown, we are officially launching the AI and the Future of Learning Advisory Group which will be made up of key staff, students, and experts in various industries who are engaging AI to help shape our learning and support programs at Ormond. The plan is for this group to dive deep into how we navigate a world where AI is moving so quickly. I look forward to talking more about this in the coming weeks and months, and if you are interested in this work please reach out to me.In closingNow that you have heard more than enough from me, let me finish up with some final words. If there is one thing I hope you take away from my Commencement speech tonight, it is this: You are some of the smartest young people in Australia and the world. You must be, because you got into the University of Melbourne and Ormond College. Use that intelligence wisely and responsibly. Grow it. Develop it. Expand it. Share it. AI is a powerful tool, perhaps one of the most powerful tools you will ever use. But it is only a tool.You are far more complex than that. Far more capable than that.And Ormond is a place that exists to help you discover just how much.