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If you’re giving a commencement speech in 2026, maybe don’t mention AI

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Commencement season has come around again — and this year, a couple speakers have discovered that it’s tough to get graduating students excited about a future shaped by artificial intelligence.

Last 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.”

“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?”

“Okay, I struck a chord,” she said. Caulfield then tried to resume her speech, saying, “Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives” — only to be interrupted again by the audience, this time by their loud cheers and applause.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt faced a similar response when he brought up AI at a University of Arizona speech on Friday.

In Schmidt’s case, the criticism actually began before the speech itself, with some student groups calling for him to be removed as commencement speaker due to a lawsuit in which a former girlfriend and business partner accused Schmidt of sexual assault. (He has denied the allegations.) According to a local news report, the booing began even before Schmidt took the stage.

But Schmidt also got loud boos when he told students, “You will help shape artificial intelligence.” The booing was persistent enough that Schmidt tried to speak over it, insisting, “You can now assemble a team of AI agents to help you with the parts that you could never accomplish on your own. When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on.”

To be fair, AI isn’t becoming a third rail at every graduation ceremony. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently spoke at Carnegie Mellon’s commencement, and he didn’t seem to get any audible pushback when he said that AI has “reinvented computing.”

Still, it’s not exactly surprising to find some students in a booing mood. In a recent Gallup poll, only 43% of Americans aged 15 to 34 said it’s a good time to find a job locally, a steep drop from 75% in 2022. 

That pessimism isn’t solely a response to the rise of AI (a shift that even tech industry workers are worried about), but journalist and tech industry critic Brian Merchant suggested that for many students, AI has become “the cruel new face of hyper-scaling capitalism.”

“I too would loudly boo at the prospect of this next industrial revolution if I was in my early twenties, unemployed, and had aspirations for my future greater than entering prompts into an LLM,” Merchant wrote.

Even when graduation speeches didn’t mention AI explicitly, “resilience” was a recurring theme this year. Schmidt himself acknowledged that there is “a fear in your 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 are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.”

Caulfield, meanwhile, might also have misread her audience of arts and humanities graduates. One student said that before mentioning AI, Caulfield already started to lose them with her “generic” praise of corporate executives like Jeff Bezos.

Another graduate, Alexander Rose Tyson, told The New York Times, “It wasn’t one person that really started the booing. It was just sort of like a collective, ‘This sucks.’”

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Imo senatorial aspirant, Nwachukwu drags NDC to court over ticket denial  

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A Senatorial Aspirant, Isaac Nwachukwu, has dragged Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC, and the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, before a Federal High Court Sitting in Owerri, Imo State, over the fallout of the party’s National Assembly primaries.

Nwachukwu, in a suit filed through his Counsel, Cajethan Oguzie, accused the party of denying him the Imo North senatorial ticket after emerging a consensus candidate and paying N5m for the nomination form.

The suit also disclosed that Nwachukwu had paid N20m for the support of the party, but his support was unexplainably reduced to N10m when the list of those who supported the party was published.

The NDC Senatorial Aspirant, in his prayers before the court, demanded that a declaration should be made that he is the consensus candidate of the party in the state with regard to the Imo North Senatorial Zone in the 2027 General election.

“A declaration that the first defendant, NDC, be restrained from fielding another candidate except the plaintiff in the General election into the Imo North Senatorial Zone as he is the consensus candidate for the said election.

“A declaration that the second defendant, INEC, be perpetually restrained from recognising and accepting the candidacy of another person except the plaintiff in the Imo North Senatorial election pending the determination of the matter,” the suit stated.

In an affidavit supporting the originating summons, Nwachukwu stated that he purchased the expression of interest form to aspire for the position for Imo North senatorial zone, a copy of which is attached in the suit already filed.

The NDC Senatorial Aspirant added that upon the purchase of the form, he made a monetary contribution in support of the party’s growth in the tune of N20m into the party’s FCMB account number through his Counsel, receipt also attached in the suit as an exhibit.

“The first sign of irregularity and no compliance with the NDC constitution and electoral act came up when the N20m I paid for party support was allocated to one of the aspirants for my Senatorial District by the name Matthew Omegara, and the N10m that Matthew Omegara paid for party support was allocated to me by the Screening Committee headed by Sam Egwu and Buba Galadimma.

” In compliance with NDC’s directives, I participated in the NDC screening exercise and was successfully cleared as an aspirant to participate in the primary election.

After my consensus candidacy was ratified, my name was shortlisted as a Candidate for Imo North district. A copy of the result is hereby annexed as Exhibit 1U5,” the affidavit added.

Nwachukwu alleged that his name was substituted with Omegara after he had been declared the winner of the primary election.

The Imo North Senatorial Aspirant claimed that the National leader of the party, Seriake Dickson, had summoned him for a meeting telling him that his candidacy was affected after a party chieftain from his state said he didn’t know him.

Among other demands, Nwachukwu is asking the court to order NDC to issue him a certificate as its candidate for the Imo North Senatorial District.

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ADC raises alarm over alleged membership forgery in Zamfara

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Supporters and members of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, in Anka and Talata Mafara Local Government Areas of Zamfara State have alleged attempts to manipulate the party’s membership records and card numbers ahead of internal political activities.
The allegation was contained in a statement issued on Wednesday in Gusau by Nura Rabiu Cibiki, Director of Media and Strategy, Campaign and Mobilisation Committee for Abdulrahaman Yahaya, an aspirant for the House of Representatives seat representing Anka/Talata Mafara Federal Constituency.

The group warned against any attempt to alter or duplicate legitimate membership figures, saying such actions could deepen tensions within the party in the constituency.

“We strongly oppose any move to manipulate or duplicate legitimate membership figures, warning that such actions would only worsen existing tensions within the party and the Anka/Talata Mafara Federal Constituency,” the statement said.

The supporters maintained that ADC members in Anka and Talata Mafara were aware of the party’s authentic membership strength and were prepared to protect the integrity of the party’s records.

The statement added that while justice may be delayed, the truth could not be denied.

Meanwhile, Yahaya has filed a suit at the Federal High Court in Gusau challenging alleged irregularities in the party’s primary election process in the constituency.

The court has fixed June 23, 2026, for mention of the case.

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