What Sundar Pichai will do if he's booed by graduating students entering workforce amid AI boom? Google CEO reveals
Amid layoffs across tech companies and the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, a sense of dread among young graduates about to enter the workforce has just
Amid layoffs across tech companies and the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, a sense of dread among young graduates about to enter the workforce has just begun to settle. And how are they dealing with it? By making their boos sound louder. Amid recent incidents of students booing tech leaders at the slightest mention of the AI boom, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has revealed how he plans to handle the awkward situation. Sundar Pichai is set to deliver a commencement speech at Stanford University next month. What will Sundar Pichai do? Speaking on the tech podcast “Hard Fork” recently, Sundar Pichai said he feels optimistic about the next generation, as they will be the ones driving it and feeling its impact.
The Google CEO said, “I've always been extraordinarily optimistic about the next generation. My goal would be to share my experiences, and that's what I'm looking to do. These graduates are actually both going to be a big part of driving that progress and also dealing with the impact.” Also Read | Seven ways AI is changing how big tech layoffs look in 2025 “Humans aren't evolved to process that much change.” In a speech this week, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told graduating University of Arizona students that the impact of AI would be “larger, faster, and more consequential” than anything before. “It will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person, and every relationship you have,” Eric Schmidt said as boos rang out.
“I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you. There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating … and I understand that fear,” he said. Even as he acknowledged the term “job insecurity”, terming the young generation's fears as “rational”, Schmidt asserted that the change was inevitable and that everyone needed to adapt to it. Some even criticised the irony of the speech. A student said, “We as students are discouraged from using it and penalised for using it. And then to have our speaker be the champion of AI is just like, OK?
Why?” Another speaker, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield, also faced boos when she highlighted the advent of artificial intelligence during a keynote this month at the University of Central Florida. Gloria Caulfield said, “The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution,” as boos erupted, and she added, “Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives. And now, AI capabilities are in the palm of our hand,” as more jeering erupted.
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