{"id":247619,"date":"2026-05-17T13:50:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T17:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/17\/ex-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-fails-to-read-room-on-ai-gets-booed-into-oblivion\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T14:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T18:05:08","slug":"ex-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-fails-to-read-room-on-ai-gets-booed-into-oblivion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/17\/ex-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-fails-to-read-room-on-ai-gets-booed-into-oblivion\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt Fails to Read Room on AI, Gets Booed into Oblivion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt Fails to Read Room on AI, Gets Booed into Oblivion<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/ex-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-fails-to-read-room-on-ai-gets-booed-to-oblivion-2000759763<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-17 13:50:00<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Here\u2019s a rare news event that hasn\u2019t occurred in, gosh, a week: a university commencement speech was greeted with hostility because the speaker praised AI.<\/p>\n

404 Media got the footage:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fairness, the speaker, ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt was at least trying to thread the needle, vaguely empathizing with students. \u201cThere is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But, as in the case of real estate executive Gloria Caulfield, whose pro-AI speech one week ago triggered an almost identical reaction, it\u2019s easy to see how Schmidt\u2019s words could be perceived as arrogant to a crowd that had heard the AI-inevitability message before a million times. He can be heard telling the crowd of young people they will \u201chelp shape artificial intelligence\u201d and that, \u201cIf you don\u2019t care about science, that\u2019s okay, because AI is gonna touch everything else as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

In perhaps his most ill-advised moment in the 404 Media footage, Schmidt says:<\/p>\n

\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

I suspect the crowd was probably already picturing itself relegated to steerage on the great \u201crocket ship\u201d of AI, but Schmidt spelled it out anyway.<\/p>\n

Premeditated booing of controversial speakers is common, and tends not to be all that newsworthy. In fact, that also happened last week to noted anti-cancel-culture guy Jonathan Haidt when he spoke at NYU. Judging from the theme of his speech\u2014basically, young people aren\u2019t fragile snowflakes\u2014a low-energy hum of disapproval seems to have been baked into his plan.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s worth paying attention when a speaker\u2019s…<\/p>\n

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

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt Fails to Read Room on AI, Gets Booed into Oblivion https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/ex-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-fails-to-read-room-on-ai-gets-booed-to-oblivion-2000759763…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":247621,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/app\/uploads\/2024\/01\/3fff434d76aa6439b1e80936a682169d.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247619","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\/247619"}],"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=247619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247623,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247619\/revisions\/247623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}