Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt booed after AI remarks at Arizona commencement

A former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, was met with students’ boos at a university commencement address in Arizona on Sunday when he raised the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) and its effects.

Schmidt – who led the tech giant for more than a decade, acquiring a multi-billion dollar fortune in the process – was speaking to as many as 10,000 graduating University of Arizona students when he addressed the impact of modern technology on society.

The topic struck a nerve of anxiety within the student body when he traced technology’s evolution, through the laptop – which he said had “democratized knowledge” and led to prosperity – to the smartphone, the internet and social media.

“We thought that we were adding stones to a cathedral of knowledge that humanity had been constructing for centuries, but the world we built turned out to be more complicated than we anticipated,” Schmidt said.

“The same tools that connect us also isolate us. The same platforms that gave everyone a voice – like you’re using now – degraded the public square,” he added, referring to the polarization within democracies.

Schmidt said that information technologies, including AI, had unsettled young people. “That was not the plan, but it happened,” he said.

Shouting and jeers against Schmidt’s talk started when he acknowledged fears that AI threatened to deprive people now entering the workforce of a future.

“I know what many of you are feeling about that,” Schmidt said. “I can hear you. There is a fear.

“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.”

He acknowledged that their fears are “rational” and encouraged them to adapt and to shape how it will be used in the future – rather than for that shape them.

“The question is not whether AI will shape the world. It will,” Schmidt said. “The question is whether you will have shaped artificial intelligence.”

The student body’s response to Schmidt’s remarks comes days after students graduating from the University of Central Florida booed Gloria Caulfield, a real estate executive, when she spoke of “the rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution” – and about “living in a time of profound change”.

“Woop, what happened?” she asked upon hearing the negative reaction. “OK, I struck a chord.”