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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

#101

Post by r_lee »

Nasrudith wrote: post #89
nehal3m wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong.

[flagged]

are you proud of being old and not being able to emphasize with the younger generations?

I feel like I see this a lot. oh I'm so old bla bla bla I don't get this oh I have no idea why xyz...

if you're young right now, your future seems to be certainly fucked.

do you think the youth is going to be all upstraight and say "take the bull by its horns!" as they give up any hope of owning a house or having a family?

but I guess they are "fucked in the head". they should be appreciating the S&P500 all time highs on their 401ks... oh right, they're not part of the gravy train. whoopsie

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

#102

Post by itsdesmond »

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.

Like I wanna stand here and listen to a tech billionaire run through a list of shit he did to my generation.

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

#103

Post by teekert »

r_lee wrote: post #90
pickleglitch wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 t…

> It's not like your gradual transition from sequencing with gels to using supercomputers over the long course of a career. this. I don't understand why people here are pretending like its not a big deal.

But aren't we all going through this? I'm going through it, sadly I'm lacking the plasticity of a young mind!

I know I'm being privileged, but not by much, I'm self employed and the world is changing like crazy and it scares me as well, how will I gather my income in a year (luckily I do live in a "socialist" country, but not so socialist for entrepreneurs)? No idea, but I set up Open Claw and Claude Code and it's opening my eyes to different ways of doing things. The primitives to do this are the same as always (Linux). Sure, if you're doing medicine you won't know how to do this, but you never did, you relied on people like me/us.

Well, perhaps the only difference between me and the younglings is that over time I've come to trust my intellect. I'll deal with it, as they say.

Btw, if you're really suggesting that "this time it's different" (as in AI is different from electricity, the internet, ubiquitous computing), then you agree with the elites: you're going to have to deal with it, the genie is out of the box and it happened faster than ever.

I'll add again, they the younglings have many reason to boo the tech elites, and I'd join them if I were there, I'm just trying to understand what is exactly going on in the minds of our precious new generation, this is important (Hey, I watched Altered Carbon!).

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

#104

Post by nehal3m »

Nasrudith wrote: post #89
nehal3m wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong.

[flagged]

Did you expect them to cheer on a billionaire that had a direct hand in fucking up their future? In this case the hate is rational if you ask me, and I’m a late millennial.

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

#105

Post by throwaway7t4h7 »

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.

"We're all trying to find the guy who did this" - guy dressed like hotdog

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

#106

Post by romaniv »

GenAI is the first technology that I've ever seen that is actively rejected by young adults and fervently pushed by people over 55.

It seems Eric Schmids of the world think they (in their 70s) have more say about the future of these students than the students themselves. That is very unlikely.

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

#107

Post by lazide »

dylan604 wrote: post #100
Ecstatify wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Trying to wrap my head around how one can still be around someone in 2023 after what happened in 2021. This confusion no way justifies what happened nor am I blaming anyone. I just don't understand it.

Money.

Usually the lawsuits start when the money is more likely to come from that, than from enabling the behavior.

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

#108

Post by dylan604 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #67
tyleo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every one of these posts about boos at commencement speeches has one of these comments near the bottom. I feel like I’m failing some pop culture quiz. What does this mean?

As others point out, a song by the band, "The Who". But it's since come to be a phrase to suggest that the upcoming generation (the kids) are going to be okay. As opposed to the more common refrain of "the kids these days…" (and then append some generational gripe like, "are just weed-smoking, lazy, game-playing, phone-staring, TikTok-headed, etc…"

Other than the TikTok-headed part, the phrase could easily be applied to at least as far back as the 80s (NES) depending on definition of game-playing. Before then, there was foosball and pinball. Nevermind the kids that play card/board games. Also, while not staring at a phone implying smart phone use, it was often said about teens having a phone growing out of the shoulder from them constantly being on the phone with friends.

So, yeah, kids these days...are just like the generations of kids before them.

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

#109

Post by PaulHoule »

jerf wrote: post #81
forgetfreeman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

There has never been a commencement speech made when the speaker couldn't have spent the entire time speaking about problems. Ever. Not even one. It has always been possible to spin an hour of doom and gloom about the future, based on 100% real problems. A commencement speech is not the time or place for that. I'm not saying it has to be 100% upbeat each time, just that it is not the time or place for an enumeration…

I think in this case the speaker was talking about a "solution" which the students perceived as a "problem"

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

#110

Post by smallmancontrov »

tdeck wrote: post #60
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…

> But why so anti AI specfically? Because society is structured so that every time some labor-saving innovation comes along, it's used as a tool to drive down wages and reduce workers' bargaining power. And they leaders of these industries aren't exactly hiding it. You might be able to game it in the short term, but It's not like anyone is seriously thinking this will reduce the totality of our efforts in the long te…

Yep. In theory, labor saving innovation (or handing jobs off overseas) should be a joyous occasional all. It could be a joyous occasion for all. But we have structured it so that, the moment it happens, 200% of the benefits go to capital and -100% go to labor -- and the consolation prize for labor is that maybe some of the 200% will trickle down into a different job later, or willingness to spend on overpriced haircuts, or something.

There's an argument to be made that this is a necessary component of an economy that can reinvent itself. Maybe. But even if we accept this convenient and self-serving and suspicious premise, there can then be no concession on the point that structuring it this way creates an obligation on the part of the person receiving 200% to "spread it around" and that attempts to dodge this obligation are morally repugnant, socially unacceptable, and ought to be met with harsh political backpressure.

For the last while, that hasn't been the thinking. Instead we have gone for "blame mexicans and let's see if we can't make it 300%!" The response of the kids gives me hope that people might be coming back to their senses on the matter.

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