DONKEY: AI Flubs Students Names During Glendale Community College Graduation Ceremony

The Breakfast Club delivers a blistering critique of Glendale Community College’s decision to use AI to announce student names at its graduation ceremony, calling the moment a catastrophic failure of empathy and common sense. The hosts expose the absurdity of automating one of life’s most personal milestones—where hearing your name called is a culmination of years of struggle—by a system that mispronounced names, skipped students, and left families confused and heartbroken. They argue that while AI may promise efficiency, it lacks the soul, attention to detail, and emotional intelligence required for such moments, especially when the very institution that condemned students for using AI in their work now relies on it to do its own. The episode becomes a broader indictment of techno-feudalism, where humans are replaced by machines in roles that demand humanity, and a rallying cry to protect the human touch in sacred experiences. The hosts don’t just condemn the incident—they mock the irony of schools preaching academic integrity while outsourcing their own duties to AI, likening it to a fitness trainer secretly using weight-loss drugs while warning clients about them. They spotlight the real cost: a grandmother thinking she’s losing her hearing, a student’s pride derailed by a glitch, and a generation already alienated from authenticity.