Posted on 06/09/2026 2:59:58 PM PDT by Libloather
This college commencement season — from north to south, east to west, state universities to the Ivy League, law schools to military academies — one trend stood out: speeches about AI.
Some speakers praised the technology and were booed; others denigrated it and were cheered. But one thing was clear, it’s all anyone can talk about. At least 25 graduating classes have heard some version of the spiel.
Yes, talk about AI is timely, but it’s also not all that helpful. Nobody knows where the technology is headed, and students probably have a better grasp of that future than the typical graduation speaker.
Meanwhile, all this talk is exacerbating Gen Z’s anxiety and clouding their end-of-college experiences with dread.
The trend apparently started when real estate developer Gloria Caulfield delivered an address to graduates at the University of Central Florida, telling them that “the rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution.”
She was stunned by merciless booing.
The viral moment it created was a preview of what was to come, as literally dozens of speakers chose AI as this year’s topic. (Did they ask AI what was trending?)
Those subjected include graduates at the University of Arizona, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Northeastern, Emory, Harvard, the Air Force Academy, UVA Law, the University of Florida, Loyola Marymount, Yale School of Management, Villanova and Pratt Institute.
Ditto Tennessee State University, Marquette, Bard, Grand Valley State, Kansas City Art Institute, Stillman, Tuskegee, Stevens Institute of Technology, the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, St. Bonaventure and the University Maryland Baltimore County.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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“Scaring college kids about AI coming for their jobs is the worst thing commencement speakers could have done.”
Yep, the H1B visa foreigners are the ones taking your jobs, suppressing your wages and inflating your housing costs.
This author is an idiot. All workers should be worried, at least for the foreseeable future until the economy is able to transition, which is going to take several years. I personally think it will take a good decade to adjust. It’s a bloodbath out there right now for white collar jobs. The scary part is nobody really knows what they want to do with AI, just that it needs to be used. In the long run, it will probably be a good thing. In the near term, not so great.
It was decided to blame all the jobs taken by the Indians, imported into the USA, on AI, around 5 years ago. In fact AI may have been invented for this very purpose. The big con may work for a few years.
Either way there is no reason for any American to learn any technological skill.
And Zuckerberg, Page and Brin get bigger yachts.
Walk and sound like a robot! You are hired!
Happens all the time.
We no longer have telephone operators.
In reality most of the colleges have been trying to squelch human originality long before AI.
Melania Trump praises winners of childhood AI competition : ‘You are our future’
https://nypost.com/2026/06/09/us-news/melania-trump-praises-winners-of-childhood-ai-competition/
Trying to stop AI is like building a 10-foot wall to stop a 100-foot tidal wave.
the college faculty is afraid of AI replacing their jobs
As far as coders go, the coders who think that all there is to coding is just copy/pasting snippets from the internet, you do have to worry about AI taking your job. Obviously on the other end of the spectrum are the new jobs created by AI specialists -- setting up AI, validating after AI to ensure accurate results, and specializing in other chores that AI can't do.
What about the coders in between -- the coders who already do amazing software design and are already incorporating some AI into their work, but not necessarily are the AI specialists? Will AI take over a lot of those jobs? NOT AS MUCH AS THE H1B VISAS ALREADY DO!!! Fix the exising problem before being distracted by the problem that may not be a problem!!
My post #9 that you are replying to wasn't about trying to stop AI. It was about the irony of an article mentioning the fears of AI reducing college grads to monotone thinking automatons, without mentioning that colleges for decades have been trying to do that long before AI. Many college instructors think that it's their job to make their students believe their cult political mantra.
A journeyman electrician, or a CCIE make bank...without college.
“Trying to stop AI is like building a 10-foot wall to stop a 100-foot tidal wave.”
The purveyors of AI seriously underestimate the murderous capacity of man.
One of the first things I ever heard when I heard about AI was that there’s artificial intelligence & then there’s natural stupidity.
We no longer have telephone operators.
.................
and the world is not a better place
For about the last 15 years when it came time to renew my SiriusXM subscription, I ended up calling the customer service line and said I was going to cancel because it’s getting too expensive.
I was always able to get the operator to give me a discount to keep me in the fold for another year.
Last month when I called and wanted to speak to a customer service rep, the system said “we will connect you with “Melody”, our automated agent.
“Melody” was able to change my quoted renewal rate from almost 30/month to 9.99/month for the same channel tier and take my payment over the phone.
That was an uncanny experience. It was a completely conversational transaction, no “press 1 for yes” etc. I’m sure it will be the norm for all call centers soon.
They’ll always need grave diggers. s/
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