Posted on 05/12/2026 4:18:41 PM PDT by DoodleBob
This year’s commencement speaker at the University of Central Florida’s College of Arts and Humanities and the Nicholson School of Communication was visibly floored after she extolled AI as the future of industry — to the ire of the school’s graduating students, who ferociously booed and jeered.
The speaker was Florida-based businesswoman Gloria Caulfield, the Vice President of Strategic Alliances for Tavistock Development Company, a real estate firm. In her speech, she triumphantly announced that “… “The rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution.”
The job-seeking graduates, however, weren’t exactly thrilled with Caulfield’s AI optimism. They launched into an explosive chorus of boos, prompting the speaker — who looked genuinely surprised by their response — to step away from the podium.
“What happened?” the stunned Caulfield asked, before reflecting that she must’ve “struck a chord.”
Given the joyful Industrial Revolution comparison, we’re wondering whether the real estate VP is familiar with the history of the term “Dickensian.”
the tech world has genuinely not grappled with how many people despise them and what they make pic.twitter.com/t2VIuYEjLW
— onion person (@CantEverDie) May 11, 2026
But the wildest part of the speech happened next, when Caulfield stated that “only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives” — a statement to which the student body responded with loud cheers. (Video showed the students excitedly raising their hands in the air.) Caulfield once again looked surprised, and, cautiously laughing, remarked that AI’s impact on society seems to be a “bipolar” issue among the crowd. Which really doesn’t seem to be an accurate interpretation, given that the crowd was actively cheering the memory of a pre-ChatGPT world.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
Why should those graduates boo? Don’t they understand that AI and robots will be paying the bulk of taxes so those graduates can live in comfort, what with mandated government supplied living costs, food and housing? They’ll be a bunch of freeloaders off of AI production.
That was awesome. It was like that moment with Ceausescu out on the balcony when people started booing him. Same stupid look on her face. She was totally confused.
She probably has one of those little AI speaking boxes as her Best Friend and it’s just as annoying as her ,LOL
Stupid Epstein class beotch. She works for the kind of company that tries to develop real estate for these mass surveillance centers.
“Don’t they understand that AI and robots will be paying the bulk of taxes so those graduates can live in comfort...?”
In what world? I doubt very much the corporate owners of robotic production will syphon off profits to provide for redundant human beings.
Being that out of touch? That’s clearly presidential timber there on that stage!
“ College of Arts and Humanities”
Sounds like they realized they chose the wrong majors.
I have an alibi. Wasn’t there.
—longtime Luddite
Did she make all her money and pension first and then could pontificate about AI just being “a tool.”?
Good news to the graduates-—although they will be pushed out of work and humiliated as worthless, through using AI their college loan lenders will efficiently and quickly track them down to demand full payments on time.
I just wanted tro ask her how much steel I should buy to astart making AI stuff?
Have to disagree. A small handful of the superrich will benefit from the wealth as the humans will be off loaded as worthless. Trillionaires will soon refuse to pay for the socialist programs to feed and house the millions out of work. No such trillionaire will feel guilty about it.
Although some men (and women) on the auto assembly lines got other lines of work after losing their homes and dignity and life savings as automation and robotics took their work, it was still true that those were good old days with some jobs left, unlike the coming years now.
Workers in Detroit used to joke, grimly in the 1980s: “If they lay us all off so the robots make the cars we won’t have any money and the bosses will have to have the robots drive the cars.”
As we all know, the EV driverless autonomous vehicles are driving themselves.
Post of the Thread.
She’s right. Booing is what rude low IQ people do.
Nicely done, fellow Knights!
The graduates would have been better off learning a trade.
Big time.
Thanks for posting this, I’m team Anti-AI too. Good the young ‘uns are on that side.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.