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As artificial intelligence casts a shadow over\u00a0career prospects, it is becoming an unwelcome subject at this season\u2019s college commencements. At several campuses, graduates have interrupted speakers with stadium-wide boos when the topic turned to\u00a0AI.<\/p>\n
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt faced repeated jeers over the weekend during his keynote address to about 10,000 University of Arizona graduates on the rise of AI.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person and every relationship you have,\u201d Schmidt said, as booing began to build in the audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you,\u201d Schmidt responded as the boos continued. \u201cThere is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating \u2026 and I understand that fear.\u201d<\/p>\n
To students the topic felt tone deaf, said Olivia Malone, a 22-year-old University of Arizona graduate bound for law school.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis speech was incredibly disrespectful to students,\u201d said Malone. \u201cWe as students are discouraged from using it and penalized for using it. And then to have our speaker be the champion of AI is just like, OK? Why?\u201d<\/p>\n
Similar responses to keynote speakers who touched on AI at other universities highlight a pervasive sense of anxiety among today\u2019s college students.<\/p>\n
Polls show growing concern that AI will doom career plans<\/p>\n
Across campuses and in a multitude of recent surveys, students say they are trying to figure out which skills, majors and jobs won\u2019t be\u00a0rendered useless\u00a0by AI.<\/p>\n
About 70% of college students see AI as a threat to their job prospects, according to a 2025 poll by the\u00a0Institute of Politics\u00a0at the Harvard Kennedy School.<\/p>\n
A recent\u00a0Gallup poll\u00a0of Generation Z youth and adults, between ages 14 and 29, found increasingly negative attitudes toward AI. About half of Gen Z teens and adults say they use AI daily or weekly. But anger about the technology has increased since a year ago, while excitement and hopefulness about AI is declining.<\/p>\n
Another speaker, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield, also faced boos when she highlighted the advent of artificial intelligence during a keynote this month at the University of Central Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution,\u201d Caulfield said, as boos erupted, to her surprise. She turned around to ask those behind her, \u201cWhat happened?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOK, I struck a chord. May I finish?\u201d said Caulfield, who is vice president of strategic alliances at the Tavistock Development Company in Orlando.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives,\u201d she said, prompting cheers. \u201cAnd now, AI capabilities are in the palm of our hand,\u201d she said to more jeering.<\/p>\n
Speakers have tried to stress positives<\/p>\n
A similar response met music executive Scott Borchetta when he spoke to the graduating class of Middle Tennessee State University about how AI is shaping the music industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI is rewriting production as we sit here,\u201d said Borchetta, the CEO of Big Machine Records, as the students in caps and gowns booed. \u201cI know it. Deal with it \u2026 Do something about it. It\u2019s a tool. Make it work for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schmidt offered a similar message to graduates: Their fear is rational, but they have the power to shape how AI develops.<\/p>\n
The advice didn\u2019t land well with students like Malone, who said the former Google executive\u2019s speech was more self-serving than inspirational.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt like a big advertisement. It felt like the longest Gemini ad ever,\u201d said Malone, noting that the choice of Schmidt as keynote speaker had also been controversial because his name appears in a tranche of files on millionaire financier and\u00a0sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. \u201cEverybody I was sitting by was really hooting and hollering about that, yelling, \u2018Epstein files! Epstein files!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Simply appearing in the Epstein files doesn\u2019t implicate wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
Grads already face a tough job market<\/p>\n
Part of the backlash from graduating students stems from the\u00a0dismal job market\u00a0they\u2019re entering. The\u00a0unemployment rate for college graduates ages 22 to 27\u00a0has reached its highest level in a dozen years.<\/p>\n
Sami Wargo just graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, where an AI expert was the undergraduate commencement speaker despite a student petition demanding that the school find someone else.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven how AI has become an increasing threat towards our jobs, especially for our graduating class, we thought it was a little bit tone deaf,\u201d said Wargo, who majored in digital media and minored in advertising.<\/p>\n
Chris Duffey, an AI evangelist at Adobe who recently used AI to \u201cco-author\u201d a book titled \u201cSuperhuman Innovation: Transforming Business with Artificial Intelligence,\u201d took the stage anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cInnovation,\u201d he told the students, \u201cwill reveal what can be done, but only you can decide what should be done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wargo said she joined other students around her in booing his message.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old has applied for around 30 jobs but hasn\u2019t landed one yet. Many of the job descriptions say applicants must \u201ccollaborate with AI,\u201d but \u201cI don\u2019t know what that means,\u201d she said, noting that most of her classes banned her from using AI.<\/p>\n
Having to be reminded of all the uncertainty at their graduation, she said, was another \u201clittle dent in what was supposed to be a celebratory day.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The Associated Press\u2019 education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s\u00a0standards\u00a0for working with philanthropies, a\u00a0list\u00a0of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.<\/p>\n
#sound #graduating #college #summer #boo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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