‘So many of you feel imminently replaceable’: John Mulaney roasts audience & host at AI conference gig
Let’s just put this out there: if you are hiring a comedian to attend your event, especially one who is known for scathing sarcasm, prepare to get roasted. That’s exactly what Salesforce learned when they hired comedian John Mulaney to entertain them at their 2024 Dreamforce event.
The comedian took to the stage during the closing ceremony, and within minutes, the audience probably wished he hadn’t. Mulaney spared no time before he mercilessly started roasting them. “Let me get this straight,” he said, “You’re hosting a ‘future of AI’ event in a city that has failed humanity so miserably?” He didn’t just go after the company itself, but the attendees in general, saying, “You look like a group who looked at the self-checkout counters at CVS and thought, ‘This is the future.’” He took in the crowd from up on the stage and added,
“If AI is truly smarter than us and tells us that [humans] should die, then I think we should die. So many of you feel imminently replaceable.”
Throughout his 45-minute set, Mulaney took the time to, not only talk about his own life experiences such as his time spent in rehab and the joys of fatherhood, but to pick out individual members of the crowd.
Speaking to a staff member for Tableau, a data visualization company, Mulaney said, “You know in your goddamn bones that a bunch of you are working on products that are just OK, but you have to vamp and make up terms to make it sound more awesome than it is.” He then turned on another audience member, and joked “You’re a VP of customer success? Congratulations on your position that did not exist five years ago!” He went on the address the whole audience saying of the event,
“Some of the vaguest language ever devised has been used here in the last three day. The fact that there are 45,000 ‘trailblazers’ here couldn’t devalue the title any more.”
The changing world of AI
In a world where AI seems to be sucking the soul out of jobs that really didn’t want or need artificial help (speaking as a freelance writer I feel pretty strongly on this point), Mulaney would appear to stand in defiance. He mocked the future that these “trailblazers” would usher in, thanking the attendees “for the world you’re creating for my son … where he will never talk to an actual human again. Instead, a little cartoon Einstein will pop up and give him a sort of good answer and probably refer him to another chatbot.”
The introduction of mainstream AI has had massive effects on certain job markets, from healthcare to finance. It isn’t bad in all cases with AI supporting rather than taking over, but in some instances, especially when it comes to the arts, AI is less welcome. 2023 saw the biggest Hollywood strike on records as writers and actors marched for fair pay and to ensure that AI would not be replacing their jobs anytime soon. In the same year The New York Times filed a lawsuit to ensure AI developers couldn’t use their journalists work to train AI and this year SAG-AFTRA members who work on video games have also gone on strike over the use of AI.
It’s fair to say then, that AI is not beloved by all. To finish off his set, Mulaney ended with a sweet anecdote about playing baseball with his three year old son, “We’re just two guys hitting Wiffle balls badly and yelling ‘Good job’ at each other. It’s sort of the same energy here at Dreamforce.”
(featured image: Netflix)
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