{"id":247547,"date":"2026-05-17T12:32:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T16:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/17\/if-youre-giving-a-commencement-speech-in-2026-maybe-dont-mention-ai\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T12:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T16:45:09","slug":"if-youre-giving-a-commencement-speech-in-2026-maybe-dont-mention-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/17\/if-youre-giving-a-commencement-speech-in-2026-maybe-dont-mention-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"If you\u2019re giving a commencement speech in 2026, maybe don\u2019t mention AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/05\/17\/if-youre-giving-a-commencement-speech-in-2026-maybe-dont-mention-ai\/\">If you\u2019re giving a commencement speech in 2026, maybe don\u2019t mention AI<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/05\/17\/if-youre-giving-a-commencement-speech-in-2026-maybe-dont-mention-ai\/\">https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/05\/17\/if-youre-giving-a-commencement-speech-in-2026-maybe-dont-mention-ai\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-17 12:32:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"techcrunch.com\">techcrunch.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s commencement season at American universities \u2014 and this year, at least a couple speakers have discovered that it\u2019s tough to get graduating students excited about a future shaped by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last week, Gloria Caulfield, an executive at real estate firm Tavistock Development Company, gave a speech at the University of Central Florida acknowledging that we\u2019re living in a time of \u201cprofound change,\u201d which can be both \u201cexciting\u201d and \u201cdaunting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution,\u201d Caulfield declared \u2014 prompting the students in the audience to begin booing, getting louder and louder until Caulfield\u00a0chuckled, turned to the other speakers, and asked, \u201cWhat happened?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOkay, I struck a chord,\u201d she said. Caulfield then tried to resume her speech, saying, \u201cOnly a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives\u201d \u2014 only to be interrupted again by the audience, this time by their loud cheers and applause.<\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"UCF Spring 2026 Commencement | May 8th (7 p.m.)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zwYkHS8jvSE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt faced a similar response when he brought up AI at a University of Arizona speech on Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Schmidt\u2019s case, the pushback actually began before the speech itself, with some student groups calling for him to be removed as commencement speaker due to a lawsuit in which a former girlfriend and business partner accused Schmidt of sexual assault. (He has denied the allegations.) According to a local news report, the booing began even before Schmidt took the stage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Schmidt also got loud boos when he told students, \u201cYou will help shape artificial intelligence.\u201d The booing was persistent enough that Schmidt tried to speak over it, insisting, \u201cYou can now assemble a team of AI agents to help you with the parts that you could never accomplish on your own. When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To be clear, AI&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/05\/17\/if-youre-giving-a-commencement-speech-in-2026-maybe-dont-mention-ai\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re giving a commencement speech in 2026, maybe don\u2019t mention AI https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/05\/17\/if-youre-giving-a-commencement-speech-in-2026-maybe-dont-mention-ai\/ Publish Date:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":247548,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/university.jpg?resize=1200,641","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247547","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\/247547"}],"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=247547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247550,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247547\/revisions\/247550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}