In desperate times, graduates find hope in humiliating tech CEOs

University graduates are booing and heckling corporate executives who praise AI during their commencement ceremonies, and the only people who seem to be genuinely surprised by this are the executives themselves. In desperate times, graduates find hope in humiliating tech CEOs ‘They deserve everything they’re getting.’ (Boos.) In desperate times, graduates find hope in humiliating tech CEOs ‘They deserve everything they’re getting.’ (Boos.) In a procession of viral videos, 2026 commencement speakers like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt face loud and sustained jeers from students after praising AI and describing the technology as both inevitable and mandatory. The videos have clearly struck a chord among young people entering a bleak job market in an increasingly unstable world. “They deserve everything they’re getting,” Penny Oliver, who recently graduated with a political science degree from George Mason University, told The Verge. “Some would argue they’re getting off kind of lightly. I’m not saying they deserve to get hurt, but it just shows a level of arrogance and a disconnect when you see that.” Schmidt was met with a chorus of boos at the University of Arizona last week while lecturing graduates to accept the technology as part of their futures. “When someone offers you a seat on a rocket ship, you don’t ask which seat. You just get on,” Schmidt told the room of angry graduates. The reason for the outrage should have been obvious. As journalist Marisa Kabas put it, “these young people have already been forced onto the ship and there aren’t enough seats.” The week before, Gloria Caulfield, an executive at a property development company, expressed shock after receiving a similarly icy reception from arts and humanities students at the University of Central Florida, where she described AI as “the next industrial revolution.” At Middle Tennessee State University, Scott Borchetta, a music industry CEO known for helping launch Taylor Swift’s career, gave a boisterous and patronizing speech mocking AI hecklers and telling students critical of AI to simply “deal with it.” And with graduation season ongoing and the online videos bringing anti-AI sentiment to a boiling point, it’s likely these incidents won’t be the last. “Of course people are going to be mad and of course they’re going to boo. Why shouldn’t they?” said Oliver. “They just spent tens of thousands of dollars on an education that is supposed to get them more opportunities, and here comes this guy [Schmidt] who could never work another day in his life and still be very comfortable and well-off saying ‘Hey, you should really get on the bandwagon of this technology that’s going to replace you.’” For many graduates, the surprised and contentious reactions of the speakers reveal a massive disconnect between the tech evangelists aggressively pushing AI and the young people being left to deal with its many well-documented consequences, which threaten everything from the environment to our critical thinking skills. Young people seem to particularly despise the attitude on display: Not only do you have to accept this technology we…