{"id":46448,"date":"2026-05-21T05:52:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T05:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/46448\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T05:52:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T05:52:29","slug":"artificial-intelligence-why-college-graduates-are-booing-commencement-speakers-across-the-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/46448\/","title":{"rendered":"Artificial intelligence: Why college graduates are booing commencement speakers across the country."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for the Slatest<\/a> to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s graduation season, so you know what that means: a lotta commencement speeches from wealthy figures of renown\u2014all directed to debt-burdened, half-asleep, cap-and-gown-clad graduates worried about the frozen job market awaiting them.<\/p>\n

They grads are also primed to boo any speakers who so much as mutter the words \u201cartificial intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first viral demonstration of this occurred earlier this month at the University of Central Florida<\/a>, where Gloria Caulfield\u2014a vice president for the real estate firm Tavistock Development Company\u2014addressed a ceremony for arts and humanities and communications grads. Just a few minutes into her speech, Caulfield began warning of \u201cprofound change\u201d to come. \u201cThe rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution,\u201d she said. The boos began, swelling in volume so rapidly that Caufield wondered aloud, \u201cWhat happened?,\u201d before earning some subsequent applause for making the observation that \u201conly a few years ago, A.I. was not a factor in our lives.\u201d But the jeers returned once she noted that \u201cA.I. capabilities are in the palm of our hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Caulfield may have been the first to see her A.I. remarks hit the social media circuit, but she wouldn\u2019t be alone. On May 10, Big Machine Records CEO and Taylor Swift discoverer Scott Borchetta closed out graduation week at Middle Tennessee State University with a speech in which he compared A.I. to \u201ca fine instrument, unopened, still sitting in its case<\/a>\u201d and pointed out that the software is \u201crewriting [music] production as we sit here.\u201d (Fact check: true<\/a>.) That elicited plenty of interjections from the degree-holders below his lectern, to whom Borchetta responded, \u201cDeal with it<\/a>.\u201d Last Friday, the screams also came for former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who spoke at the University of Arizona and mentioned Time magazine\u2019s \u201cArchitects of AI<\/a>\u201d tribute issue, which brought out a lengthy, vocal crowd dissent that continued throughout much of Schmidt\u2019s A.I. tangent. The very same day, at Glendale Community College in Phoenix, an \u201cA.I. announcer<\/a>\u201d messed up the pronunciation and order of several graduates\u2019 names as they walked the stage, forcing administrators to pause the event and redo the whole thing<\/a> with a flesh-and-blood name reader.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think the timing and virality of these moments, in this season, is coincidental. The fact is, these undergrads and grad-schoolers have had years to assess the impact of A.I. on their lives and prospects; many of the students in the Class of 2026 got to campus just as ChatGPT took A.I. mainstream in the fall of 2022. By now, they\u2019ve been bludgeoned nonstop with A.I. promotions across social media, TV, and their own academic departments<\/a>. They\u2019ve seen enough of the tech\u2019s deleterious impacts\u2014on the job market<\/a>, their hometowns<\/a>, the climate<\/a>, the basic concepts of critical thinking<\/a> and social trust and shared reality<\/a>\u2014that the supposed benefits promised by the boosters no longer seem in reach. They\u2019re mighty upset about all of that, and they\u2019re letting out that anger at a moment of maximum catharsis: when they\u2019re just about to leave academia, but have to deal with one more stuffy A.I. adult along that path.<\/p>\n

The golden promise of A.I.\u2019s boosters has been pushed hard in public: an automated utopia free of grunt work and stress, thanks to this ingenious software that will cure cancers<\/a> and empower individuals to reshape the world<\/a> as they\u2019d like it. That, to put it lightly, is not what many of these students have seen, and they reasonably do not appear to think that will come to pass. For a whole generation of campus protesters, A.I. symbolizes drones in Gaza<\/a>; for soon-to-be job-seekers, it means a bunch of bias-laden algorithms and virtual likenesses interviewing them for whatever entry-level gigs actually still exist<\/a>, or a bunch of awful gig work<\/a> in content moderation; for women and transgender students especially, it\u2019s often meant creeps with smart glasses<\/a> who may put their clandestine snapshots through automatic deepfake-porn processors; and for STEM pupils of conscience, working in A.I. (if they can even land<\/a> a steady job in the field) portends resigning oneself to an inevitable gig with some red-pilled and plainly unethical bros<\/a>, whether Elon Musk or Sam Altman or Mark Zuckerberg or Palmer Luckey, before they get laid off anyway.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Nitish Pahwa
\n It\u2019s an Industry Almost Everyone Hates. Wall Street Loves It. It Could Demolish the Entire Economy.
\n Read More\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Obviously, none of that means this is a universal sentiment within university bodies. Outside of a few exceptions<\/a>, substantial shares of college students in all disciplines have copped to ChatGPT-ing their way<\/a> through school. And in the recent past, there have been plenty of other A.I.-inflected ceremonies that proceeded without<\/a> disruption<\/a>, even as a few others elicited some<\/a> outrage<\/a>. But recent studies from eminent pollsters (Gallup<\/a>, Quinnipiac<\/a>, the Sine Institute<\/a>) show the same result over and over again: Our young scholars increasingly view A.I. as a future impediment to their future welfare, more a necessary evil that exists and has to be dealt with than another tool that supercharges their productivity.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Something Strange Is Happening at College Graduations Across the Country. It\u2019s Causing Shocking Outbursts\u2014and for Good Reasons.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Ironically, someone who does seem to understand all this is notorious A.I. booster<\/a> Eric Schmidt himself, who assured the disgruntled graduate audience of his sympathy after he rattled off a bit on how artificial intelligence will soon be everywhere, from hospitals to personal relationships. \u201cI know what many of you are feeling about that\u2014I can hear you,\u201d he added as the boos escalated. \u201cThere is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.\u201d Yeah, that just about sums it up. Naturally, Schmidt pivoted by telling the kids they just need to take control and redirect all these world-defining shifts on their own. Easy-peasy! (This type of perfunctory philosophizing is par for the course with Schmidt, who in 2024 declared that humans would never patch up the \u201cbreaking\u201d climate and that he\u2019d \u201crather bet on A.I. solving the problem than constraining it<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n

There is, at least, one other high-level executive who does seem to get it, and to whom college grads have responded very positively. Just this week, Delta CEO Ed Bastian admitted to Emory University\u2019s grads in Atlanta that he did use generative A.I. to draft his speech\u2014only to scrap the apps when \u201cthe lack of soul or warmth<\/a>\u201d from their output became clear.<\/p>\n

That redemption arc was met with rapturous applause. It turns out that young Americans still appreciate it when a figure of authority advocates for the human touch.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,794,28060,820],"class_list":["post-46448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-college","tag-higher-ed","tag-labor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}