In desperate times, graduates find hope in humiliating tech CEOs

A noteworthy advance is shaping the AI sector: AI AIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All AI Tech TechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All TechIn desperate times, graduates find hope in humiliating tech CEOs‘They deserve everything they’re getting.

)‘They deserve everything they’re getting. )by Janus Rose Janus RosePosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All by Janus RoseMay 21, 2026, 8:00 PM UTC Image: University of ArizonaUniversity graduates are booing and heckling corporate executives who praise AI during their commencement ceremonies, and the only people who seem to be genuinely surprised by this are the executives themselves.

Technical Details

In a procession of viral videos, 2026 commencement speakers like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt face loud and sustained jeers from students after praising AI and describing the technology as both inevitable and mandatory. The videos have clearly struck a chord among young people entering a bleak job market in an increasingly unstable world. RelatedThe more young people use AI, the more they hate it“They deserve everything they’re getting,” Penny Oliver, who recently graduated with a political science degree from George Mason University, told The Verge.

“Some would argue they’re getting off kind of lightly. I’m not saying they deserve to get hurt, but it just shows a level of arrogance and a disconnect when you see that. ”Schmidt was met with a chorus of boos at the University of Arizona last week while lecturing graduates to accept the technology as part of their futures.

“When someone offers you a seat on a rocket ship, you don’t ask which seat. You just get on,” Schmidt told the room of angry graduates. The reason for the outrage should have been obvious.

Industry Implications

As journalist Marisa Kabas put it, “these young people have already been forced onto the ship and there aren’t enough seats. ”The week before, Gloria Caulfield, an executive at a property development company, expressed shock after receiving a similarly icy reception from arts and humanities students at the University of Central Florida, where she described AI as “the next industrial revolution. ” At Middle Tennessee State University, Scott Borchetta, a music industry CEO known for helping launch Taylor Swift’s career, gave a boisterous and patronizing speech mocking AI hecklers and telling students critical of AI to simply “deal with it.

” And with graduation season ongoing and the online videos bringing anti-AI sentiment to a boiling point, it’s likely these incidents won’t be the last. “Of course people are going to be mad and of course they’re going to boo.

This advance offers important signals about the future of the sector, and the tech world is watching closely.