{"id":245462,"date":"2026-05-13T17:58:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T21:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/ucf-graduates-boo-tone-deaf-grad-speaker-who-praised-ai\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T18:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T22:50:08","slug":"ucf-graduates-boo-tone-deaf-grad-speaker-who-praised-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/ucf-graduates-boo-tone-deaf-grad-speaker-who-praised-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"UCF graduates boo ‘tone deaf’ grad speaker who praised AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

UCF graduates boo ‘tone deaf’ grad speaker who praised AI<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.orlandosentinel.com\/2026\/05\/13\/ucf-graduates-boo-tone-deaf-speaker-who-praised-ai-as-next-industrial-revolution\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-13 17:58:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.orlandosentinel.com<\/a><\/p>\n

A University of Central Florida commencement speaker\u2019s speech praising artificial intelligence was meet with thunderous boos from graduates during a ceremony last week, a sign of how some young people dislike the technology\u2019s encroachment into the workforce.<\/p>\n

Gloria Caulfield, an executive from Tavistock Development Company, spoke to graduates from UCF\u2019s College of Arts and Humanities and School of Communication on May 8. During her speech, Caulfield lauded AI as the \u201cnext Industrial Revolution,\u201d setting off a chorus of boos.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened?\u201d Caulfield said, backing away from the lectern and looking to the other university leaders on stage at UCF\u2019s arena. \u201cOkay, I struck a chord.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dillon Delaney, one of the UCF graduates at the ceremony,\u00a0said Caulfield\u2019s speech was \u201ctone deaf\u201d and \u201clike watching a car crash in real time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to her poorly received comments on AI, he said Caulfield\u2019s background as a real estate executive \u2014 Tavistock is the developer of Orlando\u2019s Lake Nona community \u2014 didn\u2019t match the majors, interests and plans of this group of UCF graduates.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just full of word salad, empty platitudes, and really had nothing to do with me,\u201d Delaney said of Caulfield\u2019s speech, which focused on how people are often skeptical of new technology, though it often ends up a success.<\/p>\n

The 22-year-old graduated with a major in digital media and minor in computer science.<\/p>\n

Delaney didn\u2019t boo, he said, but understood why other students did. Caulfield\u2019s remarks underscore the growing divide between how corporate executives feel about the AI in everyday life and how regular people feel, he added.<\/p>\n

Half of the adults in the United States say they are more concerned than excited about the increasing use of AI in daily life, according to a March survey by the Pew Research Center.<\/p>\n

The boos at UCF quickly went viral on social media platforms with posts about the speech gaining millions of views online. Delaney…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UCF graduates boo ‘tone deaf’ grad speaker who praised AI https:\/\/www.orlandosentinel.com\/2026\/05\/13\/ucf-graduates-boo-tone-deaf-speaker-who-praised-ai-as-next-industrial-revolution\/ Publish Date: 2026-05-13 17:58:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":245463,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.orlandosentinel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/tos-l-ucf-commencement-AI-speech1.jpg?w=1024&h=565","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245462"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245464,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245462\/revisions\/245464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}