Eric Schmidt booed by college grads over AI pep talk

Silicon Valley loves to tell college grads that the future is bright, automated, and ready for launch. This graduation season, the students aren’t buying it.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave the commencement address at the University of Arizona, facing thousands of students eager to toss their caps. He started with a familiar walk through the history of personal computers, but the energy changed the second he brought up AI agents and advised graduates on how to put them to work.

The rocket ship pitch that fell flat

Boos broke out across the arena when Schmidt told the crowd that AI would touch every profession, classroom, hospital, and laboratory. Some graduates also booed Schmidt over sexual assault allegations made against him last year.

Schmidt squirmed behind the podium and tried to quiet the crowd so he could make his point. He acknowledged their anxiety, calling it rational to fear that machines are coming, jobs are evaporating, climate is breaking, politics are fractured, and students are inheriting a mess they did not create.

Yet his takeaway was the classic tech founder playbook: when someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on. Schmidt, who currently serves as CEO of Relativity Space and invested in over a dozen AI startups between 2019 and 2025 through his family office Hillspire, called AI underhyped just last year.

Read the room, Silicon Valley

Schmidt’s icy reception was far from an isolated incident. It marks at least the third commencement speech in the past two weeks drowned out by boos over AI evangelism.

Last week, a real estate executive at the University of Central Florida was jeered for calling AI the next Industrial Revolution. Days before that, a speaker at Middle Tennessee State University faced a similar reaction after bringing up the technology.

The pushback goes beyond campus stages and straight into the power grid. Officials in Hill County, Texas, just placed a one-year moratorium on data centers and related power infrastructure in unincorporated areas, halting plans for eight facilities. In response to mounting local pressure, OpenAI launched its Stargate Community program in January to keep facilities from spiking residential electric bills, followed by a similar pledge from Anthropic.

Why it matters

We think this moment lays bare an undeniable disconnect: tech leaders are trying to sell a revolution to the very people who feel like its first casualties.

For college grads entering a tight, disrupted entry-level job market, being told that AI will rewrite every industry does not sound like empowerment. It sounds like an eviction notice. Telling nervous job seekers to just jump on the rocket ship reveals how completely Silicon Valley has failed to read the room.

This trend should serve as a loud wake-up call for AI companies. Public sentiment is curdling fast. As young talent resists the narrative and communities push back against physical data centers, simply claiming AI is good for the world will no longer fly without tangible answers for who actually bears the cost.