The 2024 Shipley School Commencement Ceremony was held on Friday, June 14 in Yarnall Gymnasium. This year’s Commencement Address was given by Shipley alumnus, and member of the Board of Trustees, Prashant Bhuyan ’96. Prashant is the CEO and Founder of Accrete, Inc., a dual use enterprise AI company launched in 2017. At Accrete, Prashant sets strategic direction and executes a product focused strategy to win share in a rapidly emerging market for knowledge engines that enable specialized AI agents to automate complex decisions. Accrete’s customers include the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, and Fortune 500 companies in industries such as Media and Entertainment, Consumer Goods, and Gaming.

In his address to Shipley's 80 graduates, Prashant emphasized the importance of maintaining humanity in an increasingly AI-driven world. He advised the graduates to think critically, foster meaningful human connections, and use technology to create new paradigms that benefit humanity, thereby becoming leaders in the future. Read his full Commencement Address below.

2024 Commencement Address, Delivered by Prashant Bhuyan ’96

To the Board of Trustees, faculty, and staff, students, families, to my wife, Ruchi, our son, Keshav, our daughter, Mishka, to my mom, and most importantly, to the class of 2024, it's an incredible honor to share this important moment with all of you. When Michael asked me to be your commencement speaker, I was floored. Surely the School could have chosen someone better, someone famous, maybe even someone funny. However, as I started to reflect on my time at Shipley, I realized that Shipley's impact on me may actually resonate with you. Recently, I've been flooded with memories of my time at Shipley. It's astonishing to think that my mom, who's sitting right over there, first brought me here almost 40 years ago at age six. In first grade, I met one of my oldest friends, Benji Wilner, who's sitting right there with his camera. And amazingly, Ben's daughter Jordan is graduating today. And I'm still trying to wrap my head around that. But while Shipley's appearance has changed, and it is aesthetically unrecognizable to me, the spirit remains the same, I can assure you.

I started first grade in 1983. My parents had immigrated here from India just 13 years earlier, leaving their families behind to build a new life in a new country. They wanted the best education for their kids, and for them, Shipley embodied the American dream. My dad, who grew up in rural India, left home to create opportunities and ultimately to support his family, which he did. He's on my mind today because he passed away 10 years ago to this day, just days before his first grandchild was born.

My dad was my hero. He had courage in everything he did, and he always did hard things in the service of others. After my dad passed, countless people would reach out to my family expressing profound sadness at the loss because of the positive impact that he had had on them. My dad's philosophy was rooted in karma, plant the seed and watch it grow without attachment to the outcome. This concept of karma always reminded me of Shipley's motto: Courage for the Deed; Grace for the Doing. Over the years, I've come to realize that courage for the deed and grace for the doing are key to forming deep, meaningful connections with other people. 

Unlike my dad, who had to support his family from a young age, my childhood was sheltered and nurturing. Shipley fostered my idealism, but it also taught me how to think critically. I have timeless memories like aimlessly wandering around Beechwood looking for chestnuts or performing Scottish sword dances in Brigadoon. In fact, our theater director, Dr. Morinelli, the one for whom the gray box was named, was also our humanities teacher. Dr. Morinelli would always talk about how the ability to reason is what separated man from animals.

I remember my first humanities class with Dr. Morinelli in the eighth grade. On the first day, he wrote a famous marketing slogan on the chalkboard. You probably don't remember chalkboards, so try to just stretch your minds. But he wrote on this chalkboard, “9 out of 10 people love Wrigley's gum.” He asked the class to raise their hand if they believed that that statement was true. Nearly everyone in the class raised their hand. I'll never forget, he then threw the chalk at the chalkboard in frustration, stormed out of the classroom, and he did not return that day. He started the next class the same exact way, except that this time, no one dared raise their hand.

After years of processing this, it occurred to me he was trying to teach us about critical thinking. The lesson had a profound impact on me. There's a book called Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter that explores the nature of intelligence, how the animate emerges from the inanimate, consciousness from cells, artificial intelligence from data. Imagine instructing a computer to print a word repeatedly. It will do so endlessly. On the contrary, when I ask my kids to do a task, to my chagrin, they always ask why.

What differentiates a human from a machine is more nuanced than what separates man from animals. Machines can reason at superhuman scale, but they can't create new paradigms. It's the ability for humans to recognize that they're operating within a system, think critically about that system, step out of the system, and then create a new paradigm, that differentiates humans from machines. You're graduating at the most exciting time in human history, a time in which literally anything is possible. But it's also a time in which it's going to be extraordinarily difficult to think critically about information and to figure out what's true. There is utility in truth. Reasoning from a false premise inhibits your ability to create new paradigms. In fact, those who have not been adequately trained to think critically are susceptible to addictive AI agents designed to feed bias and influence behavior.

Class of 2024, you're entering a world that's infinitely more complex than the one I entered in 1996. Technological advancements will undoubtedly lead to unprecedented productivity gains and scientific breakthroughs. But who will seed the AI? And to what end? Who is going to feed the AI the ground truth? AI poses the greatest challenge to liberal arts education. It's the ultimate humanities problem. My advice to all of you, do not lose your humanity. Use technology to amplify your reasoning and to create new paradigms that benefit humanity. I believe that if you put the phone down, look people in the eye, shake hands, empathize, take risks, and do hard things in the service of others, you will not only foster deep, meaningful connections with other human beings, you will also become leaders in an AI-centric future.

The main thing that I've learned over the years is that there really are no rules, only consequences. Anything is possible if you think critically and work towards a greater good. So, congratulations, good luck to all of you, and thank you.