This year’s commencement speaker at the University of Central Florida was visibly floored after she extolled AI as the future of industry — to the ire of the school’s graduating students, who ferociously booed and jeered.
The speaker was Florida-based businesswoman Gloria Caulfield, the Vice President of Strategic Alliances for Tavistock Development Company, a real estate firm. In her speech, she triumphantly announced that “we are living in a time of profound change,” and that while “change is exciting, very exciting,” it can also be “daunting.” To illustrate this extremely lukewarm take, Caulfield then declared: “The rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution.”
The job-seeking graduates, however, weren’t exactly thrilled with Caulfield’s AI optimism. They launched into an explosive chorus of boos, prompting the speaker — who looked genuinely surprised by their response — to step away from the podium.
“What happened?” the stunned Caulfield asked, before reflecting that she must’ve “struck a chord.”
Given the joyful Industrial Revolution comparison, we’re wondering whether the real estate VP is familiar with the history of the term “Dickensian.”
But the wildest part of the speech happened next, when Caulfield stated that “only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives” — a statement to which the student body responded with loud cheers. (Video showed the students excitedly raising their hands in the air.) Caulfield once again looked surprised, and, cautiously laughing, remarked that AI’s impact on society seems to be a “bipolar” issue among the crowd. Which really doesn’t seem to be an accurate interpretation, given that the crowd was actively cheering the memory of a pre-ChatGPT world.
The speech awkwardly continued as the speaker then noted that “now, AI capabilities are in the palm of our hands,” prompting — you guessed it! — more booing.
“Passion!” she nervously exclaimed. “I love it.”
The two-minute clip is a painful but — for reasons the speaker surely didn’t intend — illuminating watch. Caulfield is clearly flabbergasted by the students’ response to AI boosterism, a reaction that feels wildly disconnected from the reality of the students with whom she’s attempting to connect. The job market for new graduates is abysmal. Computer science degrees are increasingly fraught, and companies across industries are working to automate entry-level roles with the very AI tools that Caulfield is onstage celebrating. Polling has also consistently shown that the American public really doesn’t like AI: one March survey showed that Americans are more likely to approve of Immigration and Customs Enforcement than AI. This anti-AI sentiment appears to be particularly strong among young people, with a recent Gallup poll finding that 48 percent of Zoomers believe that the risks AI poses to the workforce outweigh its potential benefits.
The uncomfortable two-minute clip quickly went viral, with netizens commenting on how deep the moat between Caulfield’s AI optimism and the graduating students’ AI disdain seemed to be.
“This graduation speech moment is notable, and her amazed shock at having failed to read the room feels instructive,” remarked software engineer Cabel Sasser. “When you’re inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. But everybody isn’t.”
“The tech world,” commented The Onion’s June Sternbach, “has genuinely not grappled with how many people despise them and what they make.”
More on AI and young people: Usually, Young People Embrace New Technology. Gen Z’s Attitude Toward AI Should Worry the Entire Tech Industry