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As artificial intelligence casts a shadow over career prospects, it is becoming an unwelcome subject at this season’s college commencements. At several campuses, graduates have interrupted speakers with stadium-wide boos when the topic turned to AI.
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.
“It will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person and every relationship you have,” Schmidt said, as booing began to build in the audience.
“I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you,” Schmidt responded as the boos continued. “There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating … and I understand that fear.”
To students the topic felt tone deaf, said Olivia Malone, a 22-year-old University of Arizona graduate bound for law school.
“His speech was incredibly disrespectful to students,” said Malone. “We 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?”
Similar responses to keynote speakers who touched on AI at other universities highlight a pervasive sense of anxiety among today’s college students.
Polls show growing concern that AI will doom career plans
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