University Commencement Speakers Face Student Backlash Over AI Discussions
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Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt delivered the commencement address at the University of Arizona on Friday. And, as his speech veered into talk of AI, he was repeatedly drowned out by boos. AI is already a contentious topic, and it’s not surprising that those about to enter a ravaged job market feel particularly negative about it.
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TechCrunchFormer Google CEO Eric Schmidt faced a similar response when he brought up AI at a University of Arizona speech on Friday.
GizmodoEx-Google CEO Eric Schmidt Fails to Read Room on AI. Gets Booed into Oblivion Schmidt is the second commencement speaker this graduation season to receive this highly predictable response.
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Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances at Tavistock Group, found this out the hard way while speaking to a group of graduates at the University of Central Florida. During her commencement speech, she told the group, “Let’s face it, change can be daunting. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.”
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TechCrunchLast week, Gloria Caulfield, an executive at real estate firm Tavistock Development Company, gave a speech at the University of Central Florida acknowledging that we’re living in a time of “profound change,” which can be both “exciting” and “daunting.”
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That was met with a wave of boos from the crowd of kids getting ready to enter the workforce. Caulfield acknowledged that the message wasn’t being well received, saying, “Okay, I struck a chord. May I finish?” That was greeted by a very clear message from someone in the crowd shouting, “AI sucks!” She attempted to resume her speech, saying, “Only five years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives.” That got cheers and a round of applause. The kids yearn for an AI-free time.
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TechCrunch“The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution,” Caulfield declared — prompting the students in the audience to begin booing, getting louder and louder until Caulfield chuckled, turned to the other speakers, and asked, “What happened?”
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Negative effects of AI use were observed only among those who relied on it to solve problems, not among those who didn't use it during the study. There were similar findings in an MIT study last year that focused on using AI to write essays.
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WiredResearchers tasked people with solving various problems, including simple fractions and reading comprehension, through an online platform that paid them for their work. They conducted three experiments, each involving several hundred people. Some participants were given access to an AI assistant capable of solving the problem autonomously. When the AI helper was suddenly taken away, these people were significantly more likely to give up on the problem or flub their answers. The study suggests that widespread use of AI might boost productivity at the expense of developing foundational problem-solving skills.
GizmodoThere are three ways generative AI can be used by students: augmentation, where the tools perform a supporting role assisting in things like research while the student completes the bulk of the work themselves; reinstatement of new AI-based tasks; or through displacement, where it completely automates the work that a student would otherwise perform themselves, such as writing an essay. All three use cases can improve grades, while only augmentation and reinstatement can further correlate with actual learning and skills building.
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Some universities are planning to take action against this grade inflation, though whether the planned measures will be truly successful is up for debate. At Princeton, where roughly 30% of seniors admitted to cheating mostly via generative AI in a recent survey, faculty voted this week to overturn a 133-year-old honor code that allowed students to take in-person exams without a faculty member proctoring.
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CNETThe switch to proctoring was requested by both faculty and students. According to Princeton, students were concerned that cheating with generative AI is too easy since it can take place on personal devices like smartphones, making it harder to detect and to report, per the school's honor system. The Ivy League school also notes that reports are less frequent and often anonymous due to the potential threats of retaliation via social media in the form of doxxing or other bullying behavior.
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Independent claims that didn't surface elsewhere in our corpus. Treat as supplementary — not corroborated across outlets.
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01 The Verge University of Arizona students boo Eric Schmidt’s AI cheerleading during commencement
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02 TechCrunch It’s commencement season at American universities — and this year, at least a couple speakers have discovered that it’s tough to get graduating students excited about a future shaped by artificial intelligence.
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03 Gizmodo The booming use of generative AI by students is leading to rising grade inflation at universities, according to a working paper published this week by the University of California, Berkeley.
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04 CNET "This has made it difficult for the Honor Committee and the Office of the Dean of the Undergraduate Students to follow up on concerns, even when there is significant buzz or outrage about supposedly egregious violations," said Michael Gordin, dean of the college at Princeton, in the policy proposal that outlined the new changes. "If students alone are present in the examination room and students are unwilling to report, then there is no check against misconduct during assessments."
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05 Wired “It is fundamentally a cognitive question—about persistence, learning, and how people respond to difficulty,” Bakker tells me. “We wanted to take these broader concerns about long-term human-AI interaction and study them in a controlled experimental setting.”
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- techcrunch
- gizmodo
- verge
- cnet
- wired