Graduates at multiple universities booed commencement speakers including Eric Schmidt, Gloria Caulfield, and Scott Borchetta for pro-AI remarks amid a brutal entry-level job market.
Key Takeaways
70% of college students see AI as a threat to job prospects per a 2025 Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics poll.
Gallup Gen Z data shows AI anger rising and excitement declining year-over-year, even as ~50% use AI daily or weekly.
Unemployment for college graduates ages 22-27 is at its highest in 12 years; grads face job listings demanding they “collaborate with AI” after four years of AI bans in class.
Schmidt (University of Arizona), Caulfield (UCF), Borchetta (Middle Tennessee State), and Adobe’s Chris Duffey (Marquette) all received boos for AI boosterism.
The core tension: schools penalized AI use academically while booking AI evangelists as keynote speakers.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters broadly agreed speakers failed the room by centering AI’s potential rather than graduates’ futures, with no answer to “okay, then what?” on displacement.
A structural contradiction drew attention: this graduating cohort witnessed LLM-enabled cheating throughout college, making them skeptical of both AI hype and institutional credibility on the topic.
Skepticism runs deep toward the “automation creates jobs” argument; commenters argue that cognitive automation is categorically different from prior waves and that executives promoting it stand to extract the gains.
