Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt booed at commencement over pro-AI remarks

At a glance:

• Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed at a university commencement after telling graduates they should "get on" the AI rocket ship and that AI will touch everything.
• A March poll found AI had a net approval rating of -20, edging out Trump's immigration policies (-19) as the most disliked concept in the survey.
• The backlash mirrors similar protests at recent speeches by real estate executive Gloria Caulfield and NYU speaker Jonathan Haidt, suggesting a brewing populist resistance to AI-inevitability messaging.

What happened at the commencement

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt delivered a commencement address to a crowd of university graduates that quickly turned hostile. Footage obtained by 404 Media shows Schmidt attempting to acknowledge the anxieties of the graduating class, saying: "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."

But the empathy fell flat. Schmidt went on to tell the audience they would "help shape artificial intelligence" and that "If you don't care about science, that's okay, because AI is gonna touch everything else as well." His most inflammatory moment came when he urged graduates to accept AI opportunities without question: "You can now assemble a team of AI agents to help you with the parts that you could never accomplish on your own. When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat. You just get on."

The crowd reportedly interpreted the rocket-ship metaphor as a suggestion that they were lucky to be allowed aboard at all — effectively confirming their suspicion that they would be relegated to steerage on someone else's AI venture. The spontaneous booing and heckling overwhelmed the event.

A pattern of backlash

Schmidt is far from the first speaker this spring to face an unplanned hostile reaction. One week earlier, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield gave a pro-AI commencement speech that triggered what the source describes as an "almost identical reaction." And at NYU, noted anti-cancel-culture commentator Jonathan Haidt was met with a "low-energy hum of disapproval" during his address, which reportedly argued that young people aren't fragile snowflakes. The similarity of outcomes across different speakers and venues suggests the reaction isn't about any single personality — it's about the message itself.

The author argues that the spontaneous booing of commencement speakers can serve as a crude but revealing barometer for populist sentiment. When graduates reject a speaker's core premise in real time, it often signals a broader shift in public mood that will shape politics and culture for years to come.

Historical parallels

The piece draws on two earlier commencement incidents to illustrate how speech reactions can foreshadow political realignments. In December 2001, newspaper publisher Janis Besler Heaphy addressed graduates at Cal State Sacramento just two months after the September 11 attacks. She urged vigilance on privacy and civil liberties during a jingoistic moment, asking "to what degree are we willing to compromise our civil liberties in the name of security?" and reminding the audience that "the Constitution makes it our right to challenge government policies." The crowd booed her completely off the stage — a reaction that persisted for years and reflected the national mood of the post-9/11 era.

In May 2016, Univision anchor Maria Elena Salinas spoke at Cal State Fullerton in Orange County, a region that turned out to have a more MAGA-leaning audience than expected. As she defended the news media against rising disapproval and invoked then-presidential candidate Donald Trump — saying "Now they're even blaming us, the media, for creating Donald Trump. Imagine that. Isn't that terrible?" — an ominous rumble started in the crowd. She briefly switched to Spanish, and the rumble became unmistakable jeering. According to one account, someone shouted "Speak English."

A decade later, the political consequences of that 2016 backlash are plain. The author points to a March poll showing Trump's immigration policies carry a net approval rating of -19, but the intensity of disapproval for the concept of AI appeared worse at -20 net approval — a finding the author notes is "statistically identical" but qualitatively starker in tone.

Why it matters for the AI industry

The negative reception of Schmidt's speech fits a broader narrative of public skepticism toward AI-inevitability messaging. Graduates entering the job market are confronting an employment landscape already altered by automation, spambots, and algorithmic screening. Telling them to simply "get on the rocket ship" can read as tone-deaf when the rocket ship is perceived as heading somewhere that doesn't prioritize their wellbeing.

Tech industry figures who frame AI adoption as an all-or-nothing proposition may find diminishing returns with younger audiences. The author quotes Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, suggesting the moment calls for "a program of rejecting generative AI in extractive and exploitative circumstances, of protecting labor from deskilling, wage degradation, and surveillance, and refusing AI's intrusion into spheres of public life Silicon Valley seeks to colonize and profit from."

For business leaders planning to address college graduates in the coming weeks, the lesson is blunt: these students have spent four years reading more books than most executives have in the last two decades, they are already well informed on AI, and they are on the verge of entering an employment landscape they see as partly shaped by the very forces the speaker is cheerleading.

What to watch next

The intensity of the backlash at these spring commencements could be an early signal of a prolonged negative reaction to AI that defines the next decade. If public sentiment tracks the polling — with AI at a net approval of -20 — the tech industry may face growing friction from the very demographic it needs to recruit and retain. How companies frame AI's benefits, who benefits first, and whether they acknowledge the costs of transition will likely determine whether the rocket ship metaphor becomes a rallying cry or a cautionary tale.