Why Gen Z Students Are Booing At Graduation<\/p>\n
Get ready to turn your tassels because it’s grad season, y’all!<\/p>\n
Not to flex, but I got my Bachelor of Arts last year \ud83d\udcaa\ud83d\ude2e\u200d\ud83d\udca8<\/p>\n
Which (luckily) allowed me to avoid the shitshow taking place at many graduations this year…<\/p>\n
A bunch of commencement speakers across the nation have been mentioning a topic that a LOT of students aren’t fond of: Artificial intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n Let’s start with an honest mistake as an example. At one graduation<\/a>, some students’ names didn’t get called due to AI.<\/p>\n The speaker said, “Here’s what’s happening. We’re using a new AI system as our reader…” Not surprisingly, boos ensued, which then caused the speaker to… laugh? Interesting reaction.<\/p>\n This person emphasized how tragic the situation was:<\/p>\n At another graduation<\/a>, a speaker brought up AI when discussing change. She stated, “Change can be daunting. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution…” Queue the boos yet again.<\/p>\n She also proceeded to laugh and act confused for a second before saying, “Okay, I struck a chord. May I finish? Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives…” This caused cheers to erupt.<\/p>\n The speaker responded to the cheers by stating, “Okay, we’ve got a bipolar topic here, I see,” which did NOT sit well with people:<\/p>\n People also acknowledged that she was preaching to the wrong crowd:<\/p>\n Moving on to the more… sinister mentions, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed for quite a while during his long-winded speech<\/a> about AI. To spare you some time, I’ll provide just a couple of his notable quotes.<\/p>\n “The question is not whether AI will shape the world, it will. The question is whether or not you will shape artificial intelligence…”<\/p>\n He then talks about having respect for people you disagree with and says, “If we build artificial intelligence that reflects those values, the world would be unimaginably better for it.”<\/p>\n This person had some noteworthy questions in response to his spiel:<\/p>\n Lastly, Scott Borchetta, the CEO of Big Machine Records, said “AI is rewriting production as we sit here,” during his commencement speech<\/a>.<\/p>\n When graduates booed him, he doubled down and said, “I know it. Deal with it. Like I said, it’s a tool.” This, of course, led to more boos, which caused him to say, “Hey, like I said, you can hear me now, or you can pay me later.”<\/p>\n