Why AI is leading to boos at 2026 college graduations : NPR

Glendale Community College’s commencement ceremonies hit a snag just as students were walking across the stage to get their diplomas last week. The wrong names were being read aloud at the ceremony, just outside Phoenix. Some of the graduates’ names didn’t even get read.

The college’s president, Tiffany Hernandez, tried to explain the problem. “We’re using a new AI system as our reader,” she said, leading to loud boos from the audience. (In a statement, the college blamed technical issues and said it had apologized to students for the experience.)

Other commencement speakers who have brought up the sweeping changes that artificial intelligence is driving are also facing boos from the Class of 2026.

Real estate executive Gloria Caulfield described AI to the graduating class of the University of Central Florida on May 8 as “the next industrial revolution.”

The boos started almost immediately.

“OK, I struck a chord,” said Caulfield.

Graduating students at Middle Tennessee State University booed when record executive Scott Borchetta told them at their May 9 commencement ceremony, “AI is rewriting production as we sit here.” Borschetta responded to the boos with: “Deal with it. Like I said, it’s a tool.” As the booing continued, he added, “Then do something about it. It’s a tool. Make it work for you.”

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was repeatedly booed by University of Arizona graduates at their commencement on May 15, including when he said, “The question is not whether AI will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence.”

ChatGPT was released in 2022, when many of this year’s undergraduates were just starting college. Many have embraced AI for good and for ill, whether to build businesses or use it to cheat.

But despite – or perhaps because of – those experiences, many graduates feel those boos are justified.

“I think my gut reaction was I would be one of those people in the crowd booing,” said Maggie Simmons, who will attend her own graduation ceremony at the University of Denver next month.

She told NPR she is concerned AI is hurting the planet and harming Black and minority communities. AI language models have been found to reinforce systemic racism and data centers needed to power AI systems have had a disproportionate impact on minority neighborhoods.

“The future should be these people in this room that are earning their degree and now going out into the workforce,” said Simmons, who studied molecular biology and Spanish to prepare to become a pediatrician one day. “We should be celebrating them and their brains, not some artificial intelligence that in the future is going to take their jobs and especially without regulation.”

Kareen Gill, a recent graduate of American University with a political science degree thinks a lot of her generation is feeling pessimistic about AI.

“I think at the beginning we were excited about it and it was this cool thing, ‘Oh, I can write an essay for you,’ but now like, we don’t want that anymore and we don’t want it messing with our job prospects and messing with the jobs that we’ve worked for years — so hard for four years — to kind of be eligible for,” Gill said.

One immediate impact Gill said she has noticed is fewer internships and entry level positions doing things like answering phones because AI is replacing some of those jobs.

“So we’re seeing that firsthand and we’re seeing how much it’s disadvantaging us,” said Gill. “But I don’t think that older generations are necessarily in our shoes in that way. It’s not really going to impact their future on the rest of their adulthood in the same way.”

Indeed, a March poll from Quinnipiac University showed that there are generational differences in how concerned Americans are about AI taking jobs

“Gen Z, despite being more familiar with AI, is the most pessimistic about jobs, with 81% saying that AI will decrease job opportunities,” said Chetan Jaiswal, an associate professor of computer science and associate chair of the Department of Computing at Quinnipiac who also worked on the poll.

Jaiswal said that the poll showed that Americans overall are more concerned and less excited about AI as the technology’s impacts are becoming more evident.

“People are not rejecting AI, but people are asking questions now since the initial AI fever is gone,” Jaiswal said.

That point was echoed by Gill, the recent AU graduate, who said her generation’s concerns about AI go far beyond getting their first jobs.

“How they’re making billionaires richer and depleting our environment has really opened our eyes to the ripple effects of AI,” she said.

Indeed, Quinnipiac’s poll found only 5% of Americans feel AI development is being led by people or organizations that represent their interests.