‘Tis the season of college commencement—and this year, it’s also the time for booing commencement speakers, who have made AI their go-to topic in the face of vocal student opposition. At the University of Central Florida in May, real estate exec Gloria Caulfield was virally booed for boosting AI as a happy “next industrial revolution” for grads. At Marquette University, Adobe’s Chris Duffey was similarly disdained for an AI-happy pep talk. At Middle Tennessee State University, music executive Scott Borchetta was the one mocked for cheering on the rise of AI in the music business.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was jeered at for telling the graduating class at the University of Arizona that “the question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence.” And when current Google CEO Sundar Pichai spoke Friday at Stanford University’s graduation, he mostly avoided the topic: People had been giving him “a lot of advice,” Pichai admitted, about what not to say.

And that makes sense. After all, the class of 2026 is part of a generation facing high levels of underemployment and joblessness thanks to AI: about half of Gen Z workers believe the technology’s dangers are greater than its value, and some six in ten say they’re anxious about it.

Silicon Valley bigshots have been fixtures on the graduation circuit for decades, but they’ve traditionally been well received; for most of that time, they represented an exceptionally lucrative, growing sector that drew a massive share of young grads. Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement speech—“Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”—remains an icon of the genre; the guy giving it was part of an elite that the young listener could conceivably join.

The intense contempt for AI at college graduations is a glaring sign of how many of the young are AI refuseniks—and that tech........

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