By Mike Pearl
Publication Date: 2026-05-17 17:50:00
Here’s a rare news event that hasn’t occurred in, gosh, a week: a university commencement speech was greeted with hostility because the speaker praised AI.
In fairness, the speaker, ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt was at least trying to thread the needle, vaguely empathizing with students. “There 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,” he said.
But, as in the case of real estate executive Gloria Caulfield, whose pro-AI speech one week ago triggered an almost identical reaction, it’s easy to see how Schmidt’s 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…
