Graduating Students Boo AI at Commencement Ceremonies

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(TNS) — It’s graduation season, and that means commencement speakers are offering up their best advice for how to live a happy, healthy, and successful life.

But instead of being met with welcoming smiles and engaged head nods, one topic is being met with anger and boos — AI.

In a series of recent incidents, listeners have balked as commencement speakers have either told them to embrace artificial intelligence, or have otherwise mentioned the ever-expanding technology in a speech.

It happened when Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances for the Orlando-based company Tavistock, began telling the graduating class at the University of Central Florida’s College of Arts and Humanities and its Nicholson School of Communication and Media that the “rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.”

Instantly, the crowd erupted into boos that made the speaker take a pause.

“Okay, I struck a chord! May I finish?” Caulfield said in surprise. Fast Company reached out to UCF, which declined to comment about the moment.

The incident was not an isolated one. The graduating class at Middle Tennessee State University reacted similarly when Scott Borchetta, CEO at Big Machine Records, said, “AI is rewriting production as we sit here.”

When the crowd began to express their distaste, the speaker pushed back, saying, “Deal with it. Like I said, it’s a tool.”

“We understand and remain compassionate about our students’ concerns and questions about AI affecting their careers,” a representative for Middle Tennessee University told Fast Company. “Scott Borchetta encouraged MTSU students to explore AI as a tool to enhance their knowledge and storytelling, and reminded them that human creativity will always be the most important thing, not the platform or system.”

Most recently, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed on Friday when he brought up AI during his…

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