Here’s a rare news event that hasn’t happened in the past week: A university commencement speech was greeted with hostility because the speaker praised AI.
404 Media obtained the footage:
To be fair, the speaker, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, was at least trying to thread the needle and express vague sympathy for the students. “There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that jobs are being lost, that the climate is getting worse, that politics is fragmented, and that you are inheriting a mess you didn’t create,” he said.
But, as was the case with real estate executive Gloria Caulfield, whose pro-AI speech a week earlier generated an almost identical reaction, it’s easy to see how Schmidt’s words could be construed as arrogant to a crowd that had heard the AI-inevitability message a million times before. He can be heard telling the crowd of young people that they will “help shape artificial intelligence” and adding, “If you don’t care about science, that’s OK, because AI will impact everything else too.”
In possibly his most ill-advised moment in the 404 media footage, Schmidt says:
“Now you can assemble a team of AI agents to help you with parts you could never accomplish on your own. When someone offers you a seat on a rocket ship, you don’t ask which seat. You just sit down.”
I suspect the crowd was probably already picturing themselves operating on the great “rocket ship” of AI, but Schmidt made it clear anyway.
Pre-emptive criticism of controversial speakers is common, and not all of it is newsworthy. In fact, this also happened to renowned anti-cancel-culture figure Jonathan Haidt last week when he spoke at NYU. Looking at the topic of his speech – basically, Young people are not fragile snowflakes-A low-energy hum of disapproval seems to have crept into his plan.
But when a speaker’s words – then that alone deserves attention Two Similar words from the speakers – provoke an unplanned outrage. In fact, I would argue that you could use the spontaneous booing and heckling of commencement speakers in response to their speeches as a kind of crude barometer to capture the populist trends that, right or wrong, will define the next decade in politics.
For example, in 2001, in early December, just two months after the September 11 attacks, newspaper publisher Janice Bessler Heaphy spoke to graduates of Cal State Sacramento, urging vigilance regarding privacy and freedom during a chauvinistic moment in history. Asking “To what extent are we willing to compromise our civil liberties in the name of security?” And the statement that “the Constitution creates our right to challenge government policies,” did not apply at the time, and indeed for years afterward, and Heaphy was ousted from the platform altogether.
In May of 2016, Univision anchor Maria Elena Salinas’ Cal State Fullerton commencement speech received an adverse reaction from a larger-than-expected MAGA audience in the heart of California’s Republican-friendly Orange County. In the footage you can see him defending the news media against a rising tide of disapproval, taking out then-presidential candidate Donald Trump by name. “Now they’re blaming us, the media, too, for creating Donald Trump. Imagine. Isn’t that terrible?” An ominous rumble begins, and then Salinas begins speaking very briefly in Spanish. The thunder turns into unmistakeable jeers. According to one news article, someone even shouted, “Speak English.”
A decade later, well, here we are. An influential March poll found that Trump’s immigration policies have a net approval rating of -19, but the intensity of disapproval for the concept of AI appeared worse (even if statistically similar) at -20 net approval in the same survey.
So if we use early speech reactions as our tea leaves, the next decade could see a long-term negative reaction to AI. To meet such a moment, perhaps, Silicon Valley may need, in the words of Blood in the Machine’s Brian Merchant, “a program of rejecting generic AI in extractive and exploitative conditions, deskilling labor, declining wages, and protecting from surveillance and the intrusion of AI into areas of public life.” [seeks] To establish colonies and make profits from it.” I just mean vibes-wise.
At any rate, if you’re a business tycoon planning to address a crowd of college graduates over the next few weeks, try to remember who you’re talking to. These people have probably spent just four years reading more books than you have in the last 20 years. They’re already well-informed on AI, thank you, and they’re on the verge of breaking into a brutal new employment hell landscape to compete against millions of spambots and OpenClaw agents for a rare seat on your AI rocket ship that feels like it’s headed straight for the sun.
<a href