College Graduates Boo Speakers Discussing AI at Commencement Ceremonies Graduation season on U.S. campuses has turned into a referendum on artificial intelligence, as new degree-holders increasingly answer upbeat AI pep talks with boos and jeers rather than applause.

In mid‑May, the pattern first drew national attention when several commencement ceremonies were interrupted as soon as speakers invoked AI. At the University of Arizona, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was “met with a resounding chorus of boos” after telling graduates their task was to help shape AI, even as he acknowledged that fears about disappearing jobs and a “broken future” were “rational.” At the University of Central Florida, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield called AI “the next industrial revolution” and was “immediately drowned out by boos” from arts and humanities graduates.

Soon, similar scenes unfolded elsewhere. Music executive Scott Borchetta told Middle Tennessee State University graduates that “AI is rewriting production as we sit here,” prompting boos and his retort to “deal with it… Like I said, it’s a tool.” An Arizona community college president was booed after blaming an AI system for skipping students’ names during the ceremony.

Coverage framed the backlash as a new ritual of “booing AI,” driven by a class entering a labor market many professors describe as “grim,” with AI the “popular villain.” Analysis in The Economist argued that while some officials insist there is “no sign in the data that AI is costing anybody their job right now,” its own work “suggests AI may indeed be harming some graduates’ job prospects.”

Not all tech leaders met hostility. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told Carnegie Mellon graduates that AI would be a net positive and that “the answer is not to fear the future,” drawing “no audible pushback.” At the Kansas City Art Institute, fashion designer Jeremy Scott received “roaring applause” when he ripped up an AI‑written opening, declaring that AI “can’t have an original idea” and that artists’ passion makes them “more crucial than ever.”

As Google CEO Sundar Pichai prepares to address Stanford, he says these same graduates “are actually both going to be a big part of driving [AI] progress and also dealing with the impact,” and is crafting a “boo strategy” for an audience that is both essential to AI’s future and deeply anxious about it.

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