Microsoft's Brad Smith tells graduates booing AI to adapt as job concerns mount

Microsoft, like, totally gets why students are booing AI-pilled graduation speakers

New college graduates around the country have been booing and heckling commencement speakers who hype up AI. Microsoft would like everyone to talk it out. In a blog post running more than 3,100 words, Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith addressed the recent spate of viral clips from graduation ceremonies, like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt getting an earful at the University of Arizona, or the speaker in Florida who seemed surprised when students booed at the mention of AI as "the next industrial revolution." The videos speak to a broader societal sentiment around AI -- the technology is deeply unpopular even as technology companies insert it everywhere without consent. Young people use AI, yet feel bad about it. The backlash against massive data centers is shaping up to be a defining political issue. There's the sense that these viral clips are a cathartic expression of just how out of touch executives and technocrats really are. In the blog post, Smith takes a conciliatory tone: Of course young people are reacting this way. It's the wake-up call for the adults in the room! "Graduating students who grimace or even boo at references to AI are telling us what we need to hear, that it's time once again to raise the bar," Smith writes. "That has been a frequent refrain from students for decades. The key is always to channel uncertainty into purposeful steps that build a better future." But in substance, the blog post is similar to the line of reasoning that have elicited the boos in the first place: that AI will reshape culture, labor, and relationships in ways we might not even understand yet. Smith also suggests graduates are more attuned to an AI-filled future, having grown up with technology and being more nimble to change. "You're in a unique position to have a positive impact. You've lived through significant challenges," he writes. "While it may feel unfair that the job market is so uncertain, you were made for this moment." The idea that what the tech industry needs to do is "raise the bar" will also likely be met with skepticism from consumers: It was, after all, these very same people -- including Microsoft partners like OpenAI's Sam Altman -- who once warned of the catastrophic effects of AI, only to walk it back after realizing it landed poorly (Microsoft execs, too, are trying to thread the needle around jobs). Why should the public trust the people who caused this uncertainty to be the ones to clean up the mess? An alternative way to understand Microsoft's missive is that it's directed not at the new grads who are angry, but at the C-suite execs who are seeing these clips and rolling their eyes. In a post on X, Smith said the booing graduates are "reminding us that AI should serve people, not replace them." That they needed reminding in the first place is the whole problem.

Microsoft's Brad Smith: Graduates jeering AI are 'telling us what we need to hear'

The interests of Microsoft and graduates rebelling against AI are actually aligned. That was one takeaway for Brad Smith, Microsoft president and vice chair, from a recent return to his alma mater, Princeton University, for its reunion weekend. Seniors wore class jackets labeled "100 percent cotton" and "100 percent human," referencing allegations that an earlier design was created with AI -- part of a broader backlash across campuses this spring. In a blog post this morning, which he started drafting during that visit, Smith writes that graduates booing AI at commencements across the country are "telling us what we need to hear" -- pointing out that Microsoft's own future depends on people staying employed. "Workers have been Microsoft's lifeblood from the start," he writes in the post. "If the world's people don't have jobs, then neither do we. And if we're not doing our part to help people use technology to pursue better jobs, then we're not doing the job we were born to do." Speaking with GeekWire this week, Smith acknowledged the tension between that message and job cuts across the tech sector, including at Microsoft. He addressed the issue in the post, as well, citing the industry's desire to offset capital spending on AI, along with factors including geopolitical uncertainty, trade tensions, and a correction from earlier over-hiring. "Our industry is going through one of the most extraordinary transformations in its history," Smith said in the interview, while adding that the "expenses of capital expansion make it more difficult to afford the employment bubbles we've had, especially since 2020." Smith cited the automation of entry-level tasks among the challenges facing graduates, as well. But he also took a larger view. Computer science jobs are changing, he said, not vanishing. Coding is becoming a smaller part of the work, while the roles around it -- including designing software, managing product development, and reviewing code -- are expanding. In the post, Smith places AI in a longer line of technologies that reshaped work without ending it, from the camera to the spreadsheet to email. He calls AI the next "general purpose technology," akin to electricity, and argues its spread will take decades, not years, because the limit is how fast people and institutions change, not how fast the models improve. Some jobs go away, he writes, while new ones appear, and many are remade. Smith's advice to workers is to treat a job as a bundle of tasks rather than a title, sorting them into what AI can do, what a person can do with AI, and what only a human can do. For this, he takes inspiration from a new book by LinkedIn's Ryan Roslansky and Aneesh Raman, "Open to Work," and its list of durable human attributes: curiosity, creativity, compassion, communications, and courage. The post also offers a clear message for companies, aligning with Microsoft's own business interests. Smith says organizations need to build their own AI systems on top of frontier models, using their own data and what Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calls a "hill climbing machine" of evaluations and steady improvement, rather than simply renting intelligence from someone else. Smith cites intellectual property and data sovereignty as the central concern, arguing that firms must adopt AI without handing their hard-won expertise to a rival's model. In the interview, Smith said the blog reflects months of discussion among Microsoft's senior leaders, including Nadella and Chief People Officer Amy Coleman, and that it's intended to speak to the company's own employees as much as to the outside world. Asked what he would have told new college graduates had he been the speaker at a commencement ceremony this spring, Smith said he would have focused on the resilience of humanity more than advances in technology -- urging them to speak up for the values they care about, help contribute to a better world, and go forward with hope and optimism. "That doesn't mean these challenges may not be significant," he said, "but I personally believe that the human spirit is far greater than any artificial intelligence the world is likely to create."

Microsoft Exec Responds to Graduates Booing AI with Compelling Argument: 'Nuh Uh'

Over the last few weeks, graduating students across the country have met any reference to artificial intelligence with hearty, sustained boos. That included booing commencement speakers for talking glowingly about an AI-filled future, booing a college president after the AI system used to read names skipped students, and -- according to an account provided by Microsoft President Brad Smith -- it included students at Princeton rejecting jacket designs they believed were created with AI tools. Smith heard the boos, ruminated on what the kids were telling him and others about how they feel about AI, and came to a conclusion: The kids are wrong. In response to what he called a "powerful wake-up call for the tech sector" from the generation entering the workforce, he penned a 3,000-word essay that those kids are definitely going to read over their summer break in order to get his milquetoast message of embracing change. To start his essay, Smith offers the kind of introduction that will be familiar to any college student writing a paper a few hours before a deadline: an analogy that doesn't really work if you think about it. "In 1838, the invention of the camera sparked predictions that photography would make artists obsolete," he wrote. "Why would anyone pay an artist to slowly and laboriously paint a scene when a camera could do the job more accurately, more quickly, and at a lower cost?" Now, if you follow his analogy, he is effectively positioning the students booing AI as the modern equivalent of the people claiming cameras will destroy art. So it makes it feel like he's almost lamenting it when he writes that the overwhelming negative reactions from graduating classes toward AI are a reminder that "People will insist on having a say in deciding when and how AI is used." Ugh, those pesky people getting in the way of progress. There is one way to read the boos of students that goes something like: "We hate this technology. We hate that it's destroyed the entry-level job market for us. We hate that you keep claiming that it has the same level of intelligence as we do after putting in years of hard work into our education. We hate the 'art' that comes out of it. We hate the way that it exacerbates the growing wealth inequality gap." Then there is the way Smith reads it. "Students and graduates recognize AI's benefits. But they want to keep AI in its proper place," he wrote. "The rejection of artificial fibers and artificial intelligence illustrates how human tastes shape market economics even as efficiency and productivity advance. Machines don't buy products. People do." Not clear that the students would like their message, blunt and straightforward as it is, boiled down to consumer behavior, but hey, Smith's positioned himself as the Gen Z whisperer here. Smith offers very little by way of suggestion that any of this will slow down. A reminder that earlier this year, another Microsoft executive said that AI would wipe out white-collar jobs within 18 months. Instead, he's paid a minimal amount of lip service to the concerns of the next generation while saying, in many more words, "Get used to it." Even as he acknowledged the challenges 20-somethings face as they enter an extremely bad job market, calling it a "perfect storm," his final message was effectively to not fight the waves. "Constant change has taught you how to adapt quickly. As AI reshapes how we work, you don't need to unlearn decades of habits the way some of us do. You are better equipped to move forward," he wrote. "Technology will change, but you can stand firmly and speak loudly for values that are timeless. Agency. Ambition. Dignity. All fulfilled through work and technology that gives us purpose." Basically: "We hear you. We aren't going to do anything to address any of your concerns, but don't you feel heard? And isn't that all you actually want?" Perhaps a better piece of advice for the graduating class of 2026: Organize.

Microsoft President Asks Graduates to Stop Fearing AI and Start Adapting

Smith's own AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, predicted in February that most white-collar tasks would be fully automated in the near future. Brad Smith, Microsoft's vice chair and president, has a message for the class of 2026: He hears their boos. This spring, graduating students across the United States interrupted commencement speeches the moment anyone mentioned AI. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt got booed at the University of Arizona. A real estate executive got booed at the University of Central Florida. The pattern was consistent enough that Smith, upon returning from Princeton's reunion weekend, sat down to write about it. The result is a 3,000-word blog post that starts talking about how things were in 1838 and ends begging students to do all they can to move on with AI and find technology that gives them purpose. "The reactions of this year's graduates are a powerful wake-up call for the tech sector," he writes. "Hopefully, leaders across our industry will listen and seek to learn from this reaction." Smith opens by comparing AI to the invention of the camera. French painter Paul Delaroche, upon seeing his first photograph on a metal plate, declared "From today, painting is dead!" -- only for photography to eventually push painting toward Impressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Smith's point is this: Technology disrupts, then humans adapt and create new things. But he doesn't pretend the job market is fine. Graduates face, in his own words, "AI automation of tasks in current entry-level positions" and "corporate pressure to reduce headcount to help pay for AI's enormous capital expenditures." He, as one of the faces behind the company driving all of this, calls these changes a "perfect storm." The context makes that framing land harder. Microsoft's AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said in February that most professional white-collar tasks -- lawyers, accountants, marketers -- could be fully automated within two years. The same week Smith's essay went live, CFO Amy Hood told investors that headcount had declined year-over-year in the company's fiscal third quarter and that she "expects the trend to continue." Microsoft plans to spend roughly $80 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026. A Federal Reserve study found that U.S. programming job growth dropped around 50% after ChatGPT launched in November 2022, with researchers estimating some 500,000 developer jobs that would otherwise have existed simply never materialized. Smith, however, argues that the American dream has always been "more than a better job and greater economic opportunity," and is more about having purpose. "To those in the tech sector who seemingly want to pursue a future where computers replace jobs and AI becomes more capable than people, the next generation of people has offered a compelling response: 'not so fast.'" But as painful as it may be, he defends AI adoption as something that needs to happen. Smith argues that youngsters want to decide the role of AI, not the other way around. For this, he argues that society needs to think of novel ways to boost innovation without triggering what can easily be a financial global crisis caused by a lack of jobs and a massive inequality gap: "The technological, economic, and societal transformations of the past three decades have left too many people behind. We'll need to try different approaches, built on more shared responsibilities, if we're going to do better as we move forward." He didn't mention which approaches should be implemented. Smith's advice for workers is to stop thinking of a job as a title and start thinking of it as a "bundle of tasks." He borrows the framework from a LinkedIn leadership book called "Open to Work," which essentially instructs readers to sort your tasks into what AI can do, what you can do with AI, and what only humans can do. Smith also names five durable human skills AI can't replace -- curiosity, creativity, compassion, communications, and courage. He also wants Zoomers to chill out and be positive. "You're in a unique position to have a positive impact," he wrote, asking them to stand for "agency, ambition, dignity."