Recommendations of the Editorial team
Studying used to be different. Of course, computers already existed back then – but if it was 5 a.m. and you had to hand in a ten-page paper at 9 a.m., no algorithm would come to the rescue. You got used to the taste of energy drinks or you accepted failure. Fingers, hardened by endless hours in AOL chat rooms, typed hundreds of words in an instant. Was it all coherent? Probably not. But at least they were real thoughts – no matter how sleepy they may have been.
Students today live in a world where machine learning tools like ChatGPT have fundamentally disrupted higher education. They use AI to write term papers, which professors then grade using AI. Machine-assisted cheating has toppled Princeton’s centuries-old honor code. Teenagers starting college today are already hardened by years of outsourcing their education to a machine. Much of the media hype surrounding AI in higher education has portrayed the Gen Z and Gen Alpha students navigating this new world as lazy or unsophisticated – ready to resort to artificial intelligence. That may be partly true. But it underestimates students: many of them are still smart enough to realize that AI will do them more harm than good.
Unfortunately, those who don’t recognize this are the university administrations who are planning graduation ceremonies. This graduation season, several colleges have invited unworldly tech enthusiasts to the podium to inspire a generation of students being released into one of the bleakest job markets in recent history. At the University of Central Florida, keynote speaker Gloria Caulfield, vice president of a smart city development company, was nearly booed off the podium when she called AI “the next industrial revolution” – glowing words about a technology that will increasingly shape the lives of those in attendance.
Boos for Schmidt
Something similar happened when former Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke about the penetration of AI into all areas of life at the graduation from Arizona State University. “You will help shape artificial intelligence,” he began – and was immediately interrupted by a chorus of boos. “We don’t know the exact contours yet…” he tried to continue before he was drowned out again. This pattern repeated itself several times. “If someone offers you a seat on the rocket launch, you don’t ask which seat it is. You just get in,” Schmidt said. “The rocket is ready.” The assembled ASU students apparently didn’t want to get in – regardless of the seat.
“His speech was incredibly disrespectful to the students,” Olivia Malone, a recent graduate of the University of Arizona, told the Associated Press. “We are discouraged from using AI and punished when we do. And then our keynote speaker is the biggest AI advocate – so please. Why?”
Even Big Machine CEO Scott Borchetta — known for selling Taylor Swift’s catalog to Scooter Braun — got his fat trimmed during a speech at Middle Tennessee State University.
“AI is rewriting production right now,” Borchetta began. A few boos came from the back of the room. “I know. Deal with it,” he countered dryly. “Hey, do something about it, okay?” he shouted as the boos continued.
Absurd own goal in Arizona
The most surreal example occurred at Glendale Community College, also in Arizona: the university administration simply dropped dozens of students from the list of names at the graduation ceremony – because of a mistake that was blamed on a “new AI system”. Again: boos.
What we are experiencing here is less an unpopular technology than a generational divide in how we perceive the world. The polls so far are clear: Pew Research found last year that while 50 percent of Americans are skeptical of technology, young people are particularly likely to believe that AI will degrade creative thinking and the ability to have real relationships. The risks of AI are not theoretical for people who grew up with it – they have already seen how it undermines their lives.
“Our career prospects are being undermined by AI,” Don Strouble, a UCF graduate who was at the ceremony, later told KnightNews, UCF’s student newspaper. Strouble added that he felt that people like Caulfield were trying to “enforce a state of resignation to something that harms not only our livelihoods, but also the environment and the people who live near data centers.”
Pyramid system without a bottom
To someone at the podium, AI is a shiny new technology that fills them with optimism for the future. No wonder – his career has long been secured. Why should Eric Schmidt care whether AI is destroying the job market he sends students into as long as his Google shares are rising? His colleagues who are actively pushing the industry are the most extreme example of this. The AI industry resembles a classic pyramid scheme whose foundation continues to collapse every day. Those who leave college always begin at the bottom of the pyramid. Except this time there’s no solid ground from which to even begin climbing – just lots of binary code, zeros and ones. America’s youth are smart enough to understand that they are the zeros in this future.
