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One former Google CEO was met with a hostile reception during the University of Arizona's commencement address, as his decision to bring up artificial intelligence certainly didn't go down well with the crowd.
It's understandable that AI is a touchy subject for many right now, as while many of the biggest models are achieving record sign-up numbers and continuing to advance their capabilities, there is equally a wave of opposition bringing up a number of justifiable concerns.
Between the rapidly evaporating job market and fears surrounding the future of the climate, many people – especially those of a younger age – have a feeling of hostility towards the new technology, and that was shown clearly during a recent university commencement address.
As shared by the Wall Street Journal, ex-Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, who headed up the tech giant for a decade between 2001 and 2011, received a chorus of boos while discussing the 'fears' surrounding AI.
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"Last December, TIME Magazine selected its Person of the Year for 2025, and this time it was the architects of artificial intelligence," Schmidt revealed before boos and jeers erupted throughout the room.
Continuing on, the former executive outlined that the world is on the edge of 'another technological transformation', asserting that AI will "touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person, and every relationship you have."
Directly responding to the hostility within the crowd, he claimed to know what everyone feels about that increasing dominance that AI has over the world, noting that "there is a fear in your generation, that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics is fracture, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create."
These are certainly valid concerns and fears held among many young people, but Schmidt uses his address to express that the future has not yet been written, and instead it's potentially created by people in that very audience.
"The future does not simply arrive, it gets built in laboratories, in dormitories, in startups, in classrooms, in legislators, and the people building it will be you, and people like you."
The reaction to Schmidt's speech on social media has been mixed, as while some have expressed their own fear regarding the opposition to AI, others have criticised the ex-Google head's approach.
"If 'out of touch with reality' was a person," wrote one commenter on YouTube, with another asserting that the address "sounded more like a threat than a speech."
A third claimed that they had "never heard such a tone-deaf graduation speech before," adding that "it feels more like a paid advertising segment than a morale boost for young grads. Weird."
Alex Finn, founder and CEO of AI company Henry Intelligent Machines, offered a different approach, writing on X that the speech is the "scariest video I've watched this week," due to the fact that showcases "America's next generation actively booing the most transformative technology our species has ever seen."
He asserted that it "will be a cycle that leads to America losing to China," adding that "this should be a warning sign to all frontier labs and CEOs: messaging matters. And if your messaging doesn't change the West is cooked."
