What Happened on the Scene
Per reports and on-site video, the speaker in the commencement address enthusiastically painted the opportunities AI brings and called on graduates to embrace the transformation, but the response from the audience was increasingly loud boos. Booing a commencement speech is itself rare, but this graduating class's situation makes the scene easy to understand: they're about to step into a job market where entry-level roles are compressed by AI and hiring is broadly cold, and the optimistic rhetoric on stage sounds close to offensive.
The Boos Are a Thermometer
Insiders easily live in their own bubble of opinion—funding, launches, benchmarks, everything thriving; but the reaction on campus reminds everyone that the public's, especially young people's, sentiment toward AI is turning cold. They bear the impact most directly yet share the least of the dividend, and this sentiment will eventually turn into political pressure and regulatory momentum. Products are ultimately sold to those people in the audience, not those on stage, so the boos deserve to be heard more than the applause.
via: Hacker News