May is a joyous time of year at university campuses across the United States. The flowers are blooming, the birds are chirping, and newly fledged graduates are assembling to celebrate their hard work and accomplishments at commencement ceremonies that usually feature a high-profile keynote speaker. But at some campuses, the pleasant sounds of applause as graduates’ names are called and diplomas are distributed are being punctuated by boos and hisses.
It seems that several commencement speakers have recently made the unfortunate choice to use their time at the dais to extol the virtues and promise of artificial intelligence. And graduates from Arizona to Florida to Tennessee are voicing their opposition to platitudes that position AI as “the next Industrial Revolution,” that liken the technology to an unstoppable and force that will change the world, or that hold it up as the tool of the future.
At the University of Arizona’s commencement last Friday (May 15) former Google CEO Eric Schmidt centered his speech around the promise of AI. “Today we stand on this edge of another technological transformation,” Schmidt said. “One that will be larger, faster, and more consequential than what came before. It will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person, and every relationship you have.” The boos rained down. Even as Schmidt assured the graduates that he understood the fear in their generation that “the future has already been written. That the machines are coming. That the jobs are evaporating. That the climate is breaking. That politics is fractured. And that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create…” They did not cease.
Just a week earlier, across the country, on May 8, the speaker at the University of Central Florida’s pursued a similar tack. “The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution,” said Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances for Tavistock Development Company, a real estate firm. Again, the jeers flooded the stage. “What happened?” Caulfield turned and asked the academics assembled behind her. “I struck a chord.” Yeah, you did.
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And at the commencement ceremony for Middle Tennessee State University, a music industry executive also met the ire of a graduating class wary of the AI revolution. “Ai is a tool,” said Scott Borchetta, CEO of Nashville-based Big Machine Records. “A tool unused is like a fine instrument, unopened, still sitting in its case. You have the opportunity to use the most high-powered intelligence ever created. What are you going to do with it?” Those lines went over ok. But when Borchetta moved on to the effects of AI on the music industry today, the crowd grew restless. “Streaming rewrote the economics. Social media rewrote the discovery model,” he said. “AI is rewriting production as we sit here.” Scattered boos leaked from the assembled. “I know it,” Borchetta riffed. “Deal with it. Like I said, it’s a tool. You can hear me now, or you can pay me later.” Yikes.
Far be it from me to weigh the benefits or drawbacks of AI. There are certainly many examples of each on both sides of that particular scale. And farther be it from me to flesh out the meaning behind those youthful boos. (My own commencement ceremony was held more than a quarter century ago.)
But I do think these episodes illustrate a potential failing of those trying to sell the coming AI revolution to the generation that will live most fully with the realities of the technology, as they exist now more than as they will come to be. Caulfield’s particular choice to frame the blossoming of AI and the far-reaching effects it could have on every aspect of our lives by invoking the first industrial revolution, may be apt, but it has the danger of glossing over some of the serious pitfalls of that history-altering leap in technology. After all, the first industrial revolution bred dangerous working conditions, birthed industrial-scale pollution, pressed many thousands of children into hard labor, and ushered in a lingering era of economic inequality, just to name a few.
Similarly, even in its infancy, the march of AI progress is already stirring up well-documented problems of its own. A study published this month in the Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Buildings and Cities reported that waste heat from AI data centers in Arizona can raise air temperatures by 4 degrees Fahrenheit in neighborhoods situated downwind from the massive developments. Just what you need in Arizona—more heat. And the hulking facilities also use unimaginable amounts of clean, drinkable water and emit vast amounts of CO2. Although environmental disclosures from tech companies often don’t tell the whole story, a paper published in January in Patterns suggested that the carbon footprint of AI systems in the United States could have been between 32.6 and 79.7 million tons of CO2 emissions in 2025. And the water footprint of the country’s AI infrastructure could reach 82.5 billion–197.2 billion gallons, equivalent to the global annual consumption of bottled water.
And societal problems with AI, from chatbot sycophancy to AI-psychosis and from anti-animal bias to intellectual leveling, are also abundantly apparent.
I am confident that humanity will eventually carve a more sustainable and responsible path for our own intelligence to partner with intelligence of the artificial variety. There have already been good uses of the technology, in science, medicine and beyond.
But speeches that attempt to paint the coming sea change as something that we should all revel in and accept as the inevitable reality, without asking probing questions and carefully thinking through the effects of that change, are worthy of at least a few well-timed boos. 
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