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This year’s commencement speaker at the University of Central Florida was visibly floored after she extolled AI as the future of industry — to the ire of the school’s graduating students, who ferociously booed and jeered.
The speaker was Florida-based businesswoman Gloria Caulfield, the Vice President of Strategic Alliances for Tavistock Development Company, a real estate firm. In her speech, she triumphantly announced that “we are living in a time of profound change,” and that while “change is exciting, very exciting,” it can also be “daunting.” To illustrate this extremely lukewarm take, Caulfield then declared: “The rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution.”
The job-seeking graduates, however, weren’t exactly thrilled with Caulfield’s AI optimism. They launched into an explosive chorus of boos, prompting the speaker — who looked genuinely surprised by their response — to step away from the podium.
“What happened?” the stunned Caulfield asked, before reflecting that she must’ve “struck a chord.”
Given the joyful Industrial Revolution comparison, we’re wondering whether the real estate VP is familiar with the history of the term “Dickensian.”
the tech world has genuinely not grappled with how many people
despise them and what they make pic.twitter.com/t2VIuYEjLW — onion person (@CantEverDie) May 11, 2026
But the wildest part of the speech happened next, when Caulfield stated that “only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives” — a statement to which the student body responded with loud cheers. (Video showed the students excitedly raising their hands in the air.) Caulfield once again looked surprised, and, cautiously laughing, remarked that AI’s impact on society seems to be a “bipolar” issue among the crowd. Which really doesn’t seem to be an accurate interpretation, given that the crowd was actively cheering the memory of a pre-ChatGPT world.
The speech awkwardly continued as the speaker then noted that “now, AI capabilities are in the palm of our hands,” prompting — you guessed it! — more booing.
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