Woman who ‘saved’ Brooklyn Bridge gives AI-generated grad speech

US News

By Deirdre Bardolf

The woman credited with saving the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge in the 1880s was honored with a posthumous degree on Saturday — and even delivered a commencement speech to graduates with the assistance of AI.

Emily Warren Roebling was honored at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s bicentennial graduation ceremony for her role in seeing through the completion of the first bridge to connect Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Her husband, Washington Roebling, the project’s chief engineer and an alum of the Troy University, contracted a mysterious illness that incapacitated him during the project. Construction began in 1869 and took until 1883 to complete.

RPI researchers used artificial intelligence to create a script for Roebling, which was read by actress Liz Wisan, who played the Victorian trailblazer in the HBO series “The Gilded Age.”

“I have the great pleasure of reading commencement remarks in Emily’s voice captured with the assistance of archival materials, the artificial intelligence tool, ChatGPT-4 and a bit of human editing,” Wisan said at the ceremony.

“Be bold in your aspirations, diligent in your endeavors and gracious in your successes,” said Wisan, speaking as Roebling.

“May you always strive to build bridges — literal and metaphorical — that connect not only lands but hearts and minds.”

RPI president Martin Schmidt awarded the honorary doctorate of engineering degree to Roebling, who couldn’t attend the school in her lifetime because she was a woman.

“Emily successfully assumed the day-to-day management and supervision of the greatest engineering project of its day, an inspiration for women engineers to come,” Schmidt said.

Her descendants, Antoinette Maniatty and Kriss Roebling, accepted the degree on her behalf.   

The posthumous degree was the first to be awarded in the history of RPI, a release from the school said.

Roebling’s husband, Washington Roebling, became bedridden by “the bends,” possibly related to air pressure changes at the bridge construction site, when the project was well underway in 1872.

She stepped up to not only be his nurse and secretary but reviewed construction plans, visited the site and met with contractors and officials, according to the History Channel.

Though she couldn’t attend college, she studied alongside her husband and picked up crucial information about underwater foundations, which was needed for the Brooklyn Bridge.

The span, designed by Roebling’s father, John, was the world’s first steel-wire suspension bridge, and opened in 1883.

The day before the bridge’s grand opening, Roebling had the honor of driving the first carriage across it.

The other speaker at Saturday’s ceremony was astronaut Reid Wiseman, a 1997 RPI graduate who will lead the first manned NASA mission to the moon since the Apollo missions.