Students Boo Commencement Speaker After She Calls AI the Next Industrial Revolution at UCF

Graduation Speaker Says AI Is 'The Next Industrial Revolution,' Immediately Drowned Out by Booing Students

A piece of advice if you are giving a commencement speech this year: Do not talk to the kids about AI. That's like talking up the coal mines to kids in the 1840s. They just don't want to hear about how great the miserable future you've made for them is going to be from the people responsible for making it so bad. Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances at Tavistock Group, found this out the hard way while speaking to a group of graduates at the University of Central Florida. During her commencement speech, she told the group, "Let's face it, change can be daunting. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.†That was met with a wave of boos from the crowd of kids getting ready to enter the workforce. Caulfield acknowledged that the message wasn't being well received, saying, “Okay, I struck a chord. May I finish?†That was greeted by a very clear message from someone in the crowd shouting, “AI sucks!†She attempted to resume her speech, saying, "Only five years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives." That got cheers and a round of applause. The kids yearn for an AI-free time. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang had a little better luck while speaking to the 128th graduating class of Carnegie Mellon University. He came to spread the good word of AI, which he said started right in the very halls where they conducted their own studies, and told the graduates they were entering into “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reindustrialize America and restore the nation’s capacity to build,†according to The Next Web. He also told them, "No generation has entered the world with more powerful toolsâ€"or greater opportunitiesâ€"than you," per Axios. "We are all standing at the same starting line. This is your moment to help shape what comes next. So run. Don't walk." Not sure that one is going to hit quite the way it is intended to, given that most young folks are pretty pessimistic about the future that has been left for them. Gallup recently found that America ranked 87th out of 141 countries for the percentage of younger adults saying it was a good time to find a job. An AP-NORC poll from April found that eight in 10 adults under the age of 35 describe the US economy as very or somewhat poor. That's the demographic of people that Huang is telling have more opportunities than anyone before them.

Students Boo Commencement Speaker After She Calls AI the 'Next Industrial Revolution'

A commencement speaker at the University of Central Florida was booed, with graduating humanities students yelling out, "AI SUCKS!" Speaking to graduates of University of Central Florida's College of Arts and Humanities and Nicholson School of Communication and Media on May 8, commencement speaker Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances at Tavistock Group, told graduating humanities students that AI is the "next industrial revolution," and was met with thousands of booing graduates. "And let's face it, change can be daunting. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution," Caulfield said. At that point, murmurs rippled through the crowd. Caulfield paused, and the crowd erupted into boos. "Oh, what happened?" Caulfield said, turning around with her hands out. "Okay, I struck a chord. May I finish?" Someone in the crowd yelled, "AI SUCKS!"

Graduation Speaker Shocked When She's Loudly Booed by Students for Saying AI Is the Future

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech 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."

UCF Graduation Speaker Totally Shocked When Students Boo AI

The University of Central Florida commencement speak didn't know how to read the room I don’t know the vetting processes universities go through when screening their graduation speakers. The U.S. has thousands of institutions of higher learning, and they all need someone to give a speech to inspire the youth each spring. The speaker for the University of Central Florida attempted to do just that, and it seemed to be going alright until she mentioned AI. The University of Central Florida held its spring semester graduation ceremony on May 8, and it included a speech by businesswoman Gloria Caulfield, the Vice President of Strategic Alliances for real estate firm Tavistock Development Company, and the President of the Lake Nona Institute, a non-profit that "incubates, activates, and measures the impact of innovative technologies and programs that can become global models for building healthy, sustainable, and inspired communities." According to her LinkedIn profile, Caulfield isn’t a UCF alumna, but is based in Florida. I guess proximity gets you in the door for these sorts of things, too. Caulfield’s speech starts off simple enough. She thanks the University staff for having her and tells the graduates to take in the moment. Then it starts to get weird when she starts talking about how she has worked with some of the "most prolific leaders and innovators of our time.†These “leaders of significant accomplishments†includeâ€|Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and known ghoul. But the backlash to her speech didn’t get loud until she called AI the “next Industrial Revolution": We are living in a time of profound change. That's an understatement, right? Profound change. Change is exciting. Very exciting. And let's face it, change can be daunting. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution. This statement is immediately met with boos from the crowd, which seems to surprise Caulfield, because she turns to people on stage and asks “what happened?†When she continues, she says that “only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives,†which is met with applause from the room. This, again, seems to boggle Caulfield’s mind, as she says AI seems to be a “bipolar†topic in the room. People use “bipolar†as a way to describe what some view as an inconsistent response to something, but Caulfield fails to realize that booing the notion that technology is being used to replace human jobs and applauding that this was once not a concern for college kids who are about to head out into the workforce is actually very consistent. But she’s clearly frazzled that she’s lost the room so quickly, so I suppose her brain just picked the first word that came to mind. She keeps going and says that AI capabilities are now in the palm of our hands, which, again, the kids boo. She commends this as “passion.†If I were in her shoes, I’d maybe start skipping ahead a few lines in my speech. But her entire thesis is that the job market has faced uncertainty before, and while the introduction of things like the internet was seeming scary at the time, they ultimately paved the way for new jobs in the future, so she ploughed through anyway. The whole thing is an uncomfortable, but cathartic watch. You know these kids have come into university at the beginnings of the rise of AI and its known threat to jobs as penny-pinching corpos look for any way to cut costs for themselves at the expense of their workers’ livelihoods. What makes you think a graduation ceremony is the place to be glazing AI as the future? It’s ghoulish, but Caulfield’s surprise is the kind of reaction you get when you’re completely disconnected from the fears and struggles of people being shoved out into an economy being taken over by AI. Nevertheless, Caulfield said on her Instagram account that the graduation ceremony was “an extraordinary evening it was to empower the next generation†and that she was “humbled†to be able to spend the night “igniting optimism and potential in our future leaders.†Okay, girl.