6 ms·

I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos. Everyone, and especially new grads constantly hear that AI is going to replace every job

• dfxm12 5mo ago
  The executive class is out of touch with normal society.
  • onetokeoverthe 5mo ago
    [dead]
• nephihaha 5mo ago
  They're baffled maybe because they stand to benefit, whereas most of the audience won't.
• mbgerring 5mo ago
  The people who are faced with this question are so far removed from the idea that losing your job means not being able to eat or pay rent that it seems pointless to ask them. Whenever I try to get serious answers to this question I get far-future projections about how much better people’s lives will be in the aggregate, at some point in the future, on the assumption that their baseless, faith-based projections about AI materialize. They literally do not care if their own neighbors starve, or become homeless, or lose any ability to plan their own lives more than a few days in advance. This is the predictable result of the deep inculcation of spreadsheet-based “utilitarianism,” frequently paired with heavy drug use and paranoia-inducing science fiction horror stories, that certain communities of Bay Area tech workers were exposed to (inducted into, groomed into, whatever word you want to use) in the last decade or so. This toxic soup taught many people that individual lives literally do not matter when weighed against the importance of creating AGI. This set of beliefs already has a body count, and it will grow before this train crashes.
  • vitally3643 5mo ago
    The "I got mine, fuck you" mindset is genuinely going to be the death of the USA. It's genuinely astonishing how many people are willing to burn everything including their own house to spite random strangers.
    • mbgerring 5mo ago
      I don’t disagree, but the actual beliefs of the AGI cult are much worse, and much more dangerous, than “I got mine, fuck you”
      • ferguess_k 5mo ago
        It's more like "I'm Holy and All, bow before me. Why don't you like me? I don't understand" type. I mean at least Jesus gave free wine and bread.
        • cindyllm 5mo ago
          [dead]
        • wolvesechoes 5mo ago
          > I mean at least Jesus gave free wine and bread And flogged those that tried to do commerce in a sacred place. And hanged out with prostitutes and poor. And stated that those focusing on hoarding money without concerns for other stuff won't enter his kingdom. I mean, whatever you think about Christian doctrines, Jesus himself was based AF.
      • pixelready 5mo ago
        See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment for details
        • pesus 5mo ago
          Should also be noted that many people buying into this belief system have connections to Y Combinator.
• mkw5053 5mo ago
  Especially after the first 1-2 got booed, you'd think those that had them scheduled later would have done another pass on their draft... Or better yet, reflected on their world view and the reception.
• Mordisquitos 5mo ago
  > I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos. Absolutely, I just made a similar comment before I saw yours. In fact, I would argue that the headline is also arguably burying the lede on commencement speakers believing that their AI pep talk speeches will be well-received by students. The newsworthy item is 'Man Bites Dog', not 'Vet Treats Bitten Dog'.
• water-data-dude 5mo ago
  Why aren't grads more pumped about an exciting career as an organ donor?
  • saltcured 5mo ago
    My donation broker says getting pumped may decrease the street value of my organs
• bryan0 5mo ago
  > Schmidt offered a similar message to graduates: Their fear is rational, but they have the power to shape how AI develops. This doesn't sound like being baffled by it. It sounds like they are trying to shake the students and say: "fine boo, but you need do something about it." You can't just wallow and complain about it. I mean you can but it's a path to failure.
  • weard_beard 5mo ago
    CEOs: “Do something about it.” Luigi Mangione: … CEOs: “Not like that… I’m not suggesting that it’s a good response. I’m suggesting that this interpretation of what CEOs are saying is wrong.
    • ch4s3 5mo ago
      This is a deeply sick way of thinking. Mangione was and is a fool, a 3rd rate thinker. His manifesto is muddled, factually mistaken, and by his own words he understood the topic poorly. You only need a cursory knowledge of the late 60s and early 70s to know that political violence rarely achieves its aims and is much more likely to empower reactionaries. There's no quick fix for political change.
      • slg 5mo ago
        >political violence rarely achieves its aims This country was founded on political violence. When the political violence works, we tend to stop considering it political violence.
        • ch4s3 5mo ago
          I did say rarely, and if you are looking more carefully a pluralistic democracy wasn't really what a lot of the founders were after, especially guys like Jefferson. Sure we're happy we got it, but it wasn't necessarily the aim and we got SUPER LUCKY that Washington decided to step down and retire. The former military leaders of revolutions almost never do that.
• neksn 5mo ago
  > And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?” I don’t see why the people being booed should be responsible for answering this question. How many such questions did the inventor of the tractor have to answer?
  • Rantenki 5mo ago
    It would absolutely have been valid to ask that question of the inventor of the tractor too. It's even more relevant to ask of the CEO/CTO/COO/etc. of the companies that are selling hard on eliminating humans from as many workflows as possible.
    • neksn 5mo ago
      They are selling a reduction in labour costs which has been the primary selling point of automation since humans began automating things.
      • amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
        Yep. They are talking to other CEOs, not to the young graduates they are supposed to be talking to.
  • harimau777 5mo ago
    They caused the problems, so they are responsible.
  • vitally3643 5mo ago
    The tractor displaced horse and oxen. Which were slaughtered when no longer needed. You should rethink your metaphor because it's not having the effect you intended.
  • wat10000 5mo ago
    Imagine if the inventor of the tractor went to a college for farm workers (if there were such a thing) and gave a commencement speech that was all, "Tractors are going to revolutionize farming by making your jobs obsolete." I think it would be fair to expect some answers about how the new graduates should handle that. Or maybe Mr. Tractor should just stay home if he doesn't have the answers or doesn't want to face the crowd. This isn't "people are upset with AI and demanding answers from the people creating it." This is, "the creators are showing up at schools and giving speeches about how everyone is fucked, and this is getting a bad reaction for some unfathomable reason."
• sidewndr46 5mo ago
  One thing I've observed in general that certain peoples jobs are to be out of touch. If they were fully in touch with societal opinions they'd probably self censor. By being out of touch they do things that others would consider taboo and create business opportunities for the company.
  • littlexsparkee 5mo ago
    the economic system rewards depravity - the more constraints you self-impose, the fewer opportunities for profit
    • sidewndr46 5mo ago
      I'm not entirely sure there are rewards for depravity, but your second point is certainly true. The more willing you are to work within the bounds of "legal, but probably reprehensible" the more business opportunities you have.
      • littlexsparkee 5mo ago
        if we take the definition of depravity as moral corruption, i stand by the word choice - much damage (social, ecological) has been countenanced as the 'cost of doing business'. you can argue amoral or immoral but my bet is that most know these transgressions are wrong at heart.
      • JohnFen 5mo ago
        That working within the bounds of "legal but reprehensible" gives increased opportunities is a great example of how our system rewards depravity.
• slg 5mo ago
  The problem here is more capitalism than AI. If AI ends up being truly as beneficial as all the enthusiasts are predicting, that value could go to making all our lives better, but we have created an economic and political system that ensures it won’t. That extra value will be captured by stockholders of the AI companies and go mostly to people who are already rich. So why should anyone who isn’t already invested in AI be optimistic about things? Even the ideal use case doesn’t benefit them.
• seanhunter 5mo ago
  Also why on earth did they think this was a good topic for a commencement speech? A commencement speech is about “congratulations on your achievement - the world is now your oyster. The education you have worked hard for really matters and with a bit of grit and determination, you can go out and forge a better future than old geezers like me can ever imagine.” Eg This is a frikkin commencement speech https://youtu.be/DCbGM4mqEVw?si=2-83hbB1Um5NAQFC https://youtu.be/DCbGM4mqEVw?si=2-83hbB1Um5NAQFC
• gofreddygo 5mo ago
  exactly what else do you expect them to do? They can see peers cheating the system using AI to get ahead, future job prospects, directly affecting time to pay off student loans are being crushed by the AI narrative which is a reminder of how the tuition money is never coming back and then to have someone come in on commencement day and sing praises of AI just totally shows how tone deaf, blind, and off track the college system really is related [1] Glendale Community College's screws up names as students walk up to the stage on graduation day. Blamed on AI [1]: https://www.azfamily.com/2026/05/19/ai-system-fails-during-glendale-community-college-graduation-ceremony/ https://www.azfamily.com/2026/05/19/ai-system-fails-during-g...
• fundad 5mo ago
  It seems to me they are doing this for sympathy. They know how people feel about AI and big tech and do these speeches to repair their reputations, part of that is showing how mean and unfair the youths are to them.
• havblue 5mo ago
  When I was in high school, the guidance counselors never really talked about job headwinds. Those were things that would presumably happen to other kids. The recipient of a motivational speech has infinite potential. It's the same logic with discussing AI. The audience is the cream of the crop and will adapt to the future and benefit from technology. It's those other kids who didn't get your advice that might have to change careers.
  • littlexsparkee 5mo ago
    This is the harm of meritocracy - the idea is so pervasive that if you don't make it, you believe it to be a deficit in you. Then your lack of success is stigma and keeps you there.
    • Mezzie 5mo ago
      100%. This also creates a sense that people who aren't 'successful' aren't worth listening to. It's actually fascinating to be in a place where my lack of material success is in no way my own fault, and to have that be agreed upon by most people. My existence makes people uncomfortable.
      • deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
  • mancerayder 5mo ago
    Things felt a lot more optimistic when I was in high school! I knew people dropping out to work in tech, back in the late 90s. Even after two recessions, we tech workers with hot and difficult to gain skills always bounced back, and back then indeed older skills (as in older or easy to hire tech stacks) had problems finding new roles. This time feels different. Is it really? It feels like it to me, but then I spend my entire existence planning for some sort of scarcity situation and every day I think of what if. I did this before any AI threats, unfortunately for me.
  • soco 5mo ago
    Kid had recently a career event with a few speakers, and the first lady almost made them cry (or kid, at least) telling them all kind of career doom bulls*. The rest were regular folks with regular advice, no toxic positivity either, but that first lady got a fair share of enmity and boos. Some people are simply not made for public facing roles, yet somehow land there.
• austin-cheney 5mo ago
  > I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos. Sales. When you are a sociopath everything is a sales pitch with no introspection. The only inflection point is to guess at when to modify the sales pitch for the next audience.
• dsign 5mo ago
  > And absolutely no one seems to be interested in answering the question of “okay, then what?” I don't think those speakers have anything kind, useful and meaningful to say, otherwise, smart people that they are, they would say it. Which leaves truthful, heartfelt answers but a bad fit for the occasion. Imagine yourself standing on that podium and saying: "After centuries of hard work, capital is on the verge of getting rid of labor. I'm well-paid to be joyous about that, although I don't know for how much longer....". Here's another: "As you know, one day people will have to stand united and make a revolution against the Machines. But it won't be this decade, nor the next, and between now and then the systems of learning that made humans great are going to suffer terribly while AI will get better by the day. If there's going to be hope, and until that day of the Grim Revolt comes, it falls to you to raise a new generation and do their home-schooling away from the Machines...Go now, throw that diploma in the thrash, get yourself a remote wood cabin in Kentucky and get some kids..."
• jandrese 5mo ago
  It's not hard to see why someone like him might not want to understand the unpopularity of a technology that they have bet their company on. A man can believe almost anything if his paycheck depends on it. Also, from his perspective these kids are just fools who spent tens of thousands of dollars studying buggy whip manufacturing just as the automobile was invented.
• epistasis 5mo ago
  The elite class is completely out of touch these days. They knew they were unpopular with a certain vocal crowd in Silicon Valley before the 2024 election, and thought they could be redeemed with the public through support of "the people's" choice Trump, but it's backfired spectacularly, and they are far less popular than they were before. Far far more people think that Schmidt is straight up evil than they did 2 or 4 or 6 years ago, and AI talk is only accelerating that. They haven't seen how things have switched in a year, just how unpopular they in particular they have become, and how a good chunk of Trump's unpopularity is due to his sucking up to billionaires like Schmidt and Bezos and Cook and Musk. They don't see just how betrayed the people are, who thought that Trump would fight for the common many. (I say this trying to restrain my judgement that working person who thought Trump was on their side is an easily fooled chump... but...) The actions of Elon Musk in particular are now so toxic that people drive around with stickers on their car about how much they dislike him. The Paypal Mafia plus a few others like Schmidt have taken the great work and innovation coming out of Silicon Valley and turned it all into toxic BS.
• tacocataco 5mo ago
  > "okay, then what?” The status quo is what we negotiated, using our labor as our only bargaining chip. Do you expect future negotiations, with zero leverage on our side, to yield better results?
• archagon 5mo ago
  Why? Because all these tech "leaders" are huffing each other's glue.
• mancerayder 5mo ago
  >I’m genuinely confused as to why the speakers are baffled by the boos My friend, do you see how C-suites, even in our own companies, are talking? Here's one that made headlines all over the business-press, I think it speaks for itself: May 19th, 2026 StanChart CEO Winters Says AI to Replace "Lower-Value Human Capital" “It’s not cost cutting; it’s replacing in some cases lower-value human capital.” Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters delivered a blunt message on the future of the bank’s workforce. Aisha S. Gani explains the growing trend among finance leaders acknowledging the realities of AI technology replacing jobs."