{"id":70122,"date":"2026-06-11T09:45:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T09:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/70122\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T09:45:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T09:45:14","slug":"microsoft-president-says-gen-zs-ai-backlash-is-a-wake-up-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/70122\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft President Says Gen Z’s AI Backlash Is a Wake-up Call"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft President Brad Smith has a message for tech leaders after college graduates booed AI<\/a> during this year’s commencement speeches: listen.<\/p>\n

In a blog post published Wednesday, Smith said recent pushback \u2014 including from students about to enter the job market \u2014 against AI’s role in society should serve as “a powerful wake-up call for the tech sector.”<\/p>\n

“To those in the tech sector who seemingly want to pursue a future where computers replace jobs, and AI becomes more capable than people, the next generation has offered a compelling response: ‘Not so fast,'” Smith wrote.<\/p>\n

For years, executives have cast AI as transformative and, at times, warned that its impact on jobs could be brutal.<\/p>\n

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei<\/a> said last year that AI is becoming so powerful that it could wipe out half of all entry-level jobs. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman<\/a> said in February that computer work “will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.”<\/p>\n

So it’s perhaps unsurprising that college graduates \u2014 who typically fill many of the entry-level office jobs Amodei said will no longer exist \u2014 have booed executives like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt<\/a>, who painted AI’s impact in rosy terms during their graduation speeches.<\/p>\n

In his blog post, Smith acknowledged the students’ concerns. He said today’s graduates face “AI automation of tasks in current entry-level positions” as well as pressure, especially in tech, from companies that are reducing head count while pouring billions into AI infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Tech leaders have begun to change their tone<\/a> in recent weeks, emphasizing productivity gains rather than job losses. Multiple leaders, from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman<\/a> to Palantir CEO Alex Karp, who have also warned about AI displacing jobs, are now emphasizing how it can help employees work more efficiently.<\/p>\n

The sunnier messaging comes as AI companies eye public-market debuts and face serious local opposition to the data centers needed to power their products.<\/p>\n

Smith has not been a leading voice in the AI jobs-doom chorus. His post, however, echoed that more optimistic refrain now coming from Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n

“AI often is at its best when we use it to strengthen existing human capabilities and endeavors,” he wrote. “In short, people can use AI to make themselves better.”<\/p>\n

Still, Smith argued that the AI panic may be getting ahead of reality. He said AI is likely to become one of the most important general-purpose technologies of the next 25 years, but warned that tech leaders often overestimate how quickly new tools will transform society.<\/p>\n

“First, they frequently overestimate the arrival of new technology, especially the pace of its impact,” he wrote. “And even more importantly, they underestimate the capabilities of people.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft President Brad Smith has a message for tech leaders after college graduates booed AI during this year’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[24,420,7829,1069,14917,24119,532,14821,1087,2979,4276,320,7828,572,30982,26,16493,38942,573],"class_list":["post-70122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-ai","tag-azure","tag-azure-ai","tag-big-tech","tag-blog-post","tag-college-graduate","tag-company","tag-entry-level-job","tag-gen-z","tag-impact","tag-job","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-ai","tag-people","tag-smith","tag-student","tag-tech-leader","tag-wake-up-call","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70122","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=70122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}