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College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

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Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#71

Post by pickleglitch »

teekert wrote: post #45
analogpixel wrote: post #17

> Tennessee State University suggested AI was "rewriting production as we sit here" and told his audience to "deal with it" as they jeered him in response. Guess it doesn't take much to see what's under the mask.

So what is he supposed to say? "Ok let's stop developing AI so you can all have the exact job you trained for?" That hasn't been the case for decades. When I left my eduction I could sequence 200 basepairs using gels. Now I process terabytes of NGS data on supercomputers. I dealt with it, I enjoyed it. Edit: Not saying these kids have nothing to rage against, they can't afford houses, are uninsured, they face a huge…

>But why so anti AI specifically

I think maybe AI is just the last straw for many people. If capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, AI represents the ultimate dream of the capitalist: the elimination of the need of human labor entirely. Whether or not it can achieve that is secondary to the goal itself.

Grads are facing a brutal job market where much of what they just spent several years of their lives learning is going to have little to no value to employers. It's not like your gradual transition from sequencing with gels to using supercomputers over the long course of a career.

It's like you just spent 4 years learning to sequence with gels, and now someone is telling you that was a waste of time, and you should just stop complaining and deal with it.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#72

Post by Ecstatify »

tedggh wrote: post #25

Eric Schmidt’s speech was particularly bad regardless of the subject, his condescending tone alone deserved the booing.

Not the only issue people have issues with:

> Ritter filed a lawsuit in November that alleged Schmidt, a former chief executive and chairman of Google, “forcibly raped” her while on a yacht off the coast of Mexico in 2021.

> She also claimed they had sex without her consent during the 2023 Burning Man festival in Nevada.

ref: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-03-06/former-goo...

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#73

Post by jerf »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #68
hermannj314 wrote: post #31

"After my speech for the troops about how we are losing in Iran, my speech to children with cancer about how we've gutted research, sure I can then give a speech to people entering the job market about how AI is ruining the job market" Perfect, that's exactly the message of despair we want to send! (How I imagine picking these speakers goes at every college campus)

The first step in resolving any problem is acknowledging that it exists. Ignoring real issues in favor of comfortable narratives is insane.

College students had 4+ years to learn about the real issues before the graduation ceremory, and the rest of their lives after it. Rubbing every problem in the world in their face at a graduation ceremony is just gauche.

To everything a time and a season. Not every second has to dedicated to "problems".

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#74

Post by smallmancontrov »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #68
hermannj314 wrote: post #31

"After my speech for the troops about how we are losing in Iran, my speech to children with cancer about how we've gutted research, sure I can then give a speech to people entering the job market about how AI is ruining the job market" Perfect, that's exactly the message of despair we want to send! (How I imagine picking these speakers goes at every college campus)

The first step in resolving any problem is acknowledging that it exists. Ignoring real issues in favor of comfortable narratives is insane.

The "boos" are an indication that kids finally understand who to blame. In a dark time, that's a ray of hope: the kids are alright.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#75

Post by forgetfreeman »

jerf wrote: post #73
forgetfreeman wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first step in resolving any problem is acknowledging that it exists. Ignoring real issues in favor of comfortable narratives is insane.

College students had 4+ years to learn about the real issues before the graduation ceremory, and the rest of their lives after it. Rubbing every problem in the world in their face at a graduation ceremony is just gauche . To everything a time and a season. Not every second has to dedicated to "problems".

"Not every second has to dedicated to "problems"." I was a lot quicker to agree with this sentiment in prior decades where we had notionally fewer of them, the big ones seemed better understood, and the folks managing the levers of power at least managed the appearance of competence.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#76

Post by skrebbel »

Fraterkes wrote: post #61

Apart from being tonedeaf, this stuff just strikes me as very lazy. Who still needs to be told that AI is new and transformative? Getting the privilege of monologueing to a crowd of people on one of the biggest days of their lives, and then just throwing out a bunch of obvious cliches... pretty damning imo.

I think this is the key point. HN commenters on this thread and related ones like to assume everybody’s an activist luddite but actually I bet the majority of the audience is just rolling their eyes at the amount of open doors being kicked in while being forced to sit still and listen to that drivel.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#77

Post by eschulz »

Fraterkes wrote: post #61

Apart from being tonedeaf, this stuff just strikes me as very lazy. Who still needs to be told that AI is new and transformative? Getting the privilege of monologueing to a crowd of people on one of the biggest days of their lives, and then just throwing out a bunch of obvious cliches... pretty damning imo.

Absolutely, great graduation speeches are unique and from the heart. They don't sound like a sales pitch for the latest trend or thing, and mentioning AI shows how clueless theses speakers are.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#78

Post by mekdoonggi »

OutOfHere wrote: post #62

By rejecting AI, these students have a particularly bad future ahead. Rejecting reality doesn't make reality bend to you. Due to this rejection, they risk having few jobs, then no jobs. The Schmidts of the world have negative sympathy for such deniers.

They aren't rejecting it at all. They are expressing their opinion on it which is hugely negative. Why? Because it's a useful technology, but so far has succeeded in taking jobs away, poisoning minds, art, and politics, hoovering up all the capital, and getting shoved into every possible thing.

The billionaires tell us over and over, "Get on board or you'll starve!" and I am certain they will be stunned when they meet the rude end of a pitchfork.

Edit: I did not intend to advocate violence, just warn about public opinion. Please do not harm anyone.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#79

Post by stvltvs »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #75
jerf wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College students had 4+ years to learn about the real issues before the graduation ceremory, and the rest of their lives after it. Rubbing every problem in the world in their face at a graduation ceremony is just gauche . To everything a time and a season. Not every second has to dedicated to "problems".

"Not every second has to dedicated to "problems"." I was a lot quicker to agree with this sentiment in prior decades where we had notionally fewer of them, the big ones seemed better understood, and the folks managing the levers of power at least managed the appearance of competence.

This will go over great at weddings and birthday parties!

We need to fight for a better world, but that requires that we're not burnt out by thinking about our problems 24/7. We need some fun and joy to make the fight worthwhile.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#80

Post by teekert »

cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #59
teekert wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is he supposed to say? "Ok let's stop developing AI so you can all have the exact job you trained for?" That hasn't been the case for decades. When I left my eduction I could sequence 200 basepairs using gels. Now I process terabytes of NGS data on supercomputers. I dealt with it, I enjoyed it. Edit: Not saying these kids have nothing to rage against, they can't afford houses, are uninsured, they face a huge…

Do you seriously don't understand why?

Do you seriously think everybody is a programmer now that we have AI? Or that we don't need programmers anymore?

The tools are just changing. But everything is always changing.

Again: Sure they have much to boo about, but AI? Gen AI can run on your own machine even, you can fully own the means to your production. How is this wasting the time they spent studying? You still need knowledge and understanding of a field to be active in it. When the tools change your internal "world model" is not suddenly corrupt. I hope these kids were taught how to think, not what to think.

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