Cheers, jeers, and laughs: The speeches about AI that drew strong responses from 2026 grads

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt received audible boos from students at the University of Arizona’s commencement ceremony.

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

Schmidt said no one intended to build technology “that would polarize democracies and unsettle a generation of young people,” but that’s what occurred anyway.

“I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you. There is a fear,” Schmidt said, stopping briefly as the shouts intensified. “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.”

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak received cheers for a clever wordplay he made about AI during Grand Valley State University’s graduation ceremony.

“You have AI — actual intelligence,” Wozniak said.

Wozniak said AI was one of many efforts “to create a brain.”

“It would take too long to go deeply into what I think about AI, but we’ve been trying to create a brain,” Wozniak said. “Is there a way we can duplicate a routine a trillion times and have it work like a brain? AI is one of those attempts.”

Delta CEO Ed Bastian said he asked AI to lend him a hand when he was crafting his speech to Emory University graduates. He said the results lacked “soul or warmth.”

“You want to hear from me, not some algorithm of me,” he told the graduates. “So, don’t worry, I threw it away, and took pencil to paper.”

Bastian was applauded for his anecdote, which he included as a warning to graduates about taking the easy way out of situations.

“Many times, doing the right thing comes at a cost,” he said. “I must admit, taking a shortcut or pushing the ‘easy button’ can sometimes be more tempting. But they never yield an enduring result or an effective solution.”

Record executive Scott Borchetta told Middle Tennessee State University that AI was already rewriting the rules, much like streaming had upended the music business.

“Streaming rewrote the economics. Social media rewrote the discovery model,” he said. “AI is rewriting production as we sit here.”

As the boos began, Borchetta, who signed Taylor Swift to her first contract and later had a falling out with the superstar over rights to her masters, remained defiant.

“I know it. Deal with it,” Borchetta replied, adding, “Like I said, it’s a tool.”

Borchetta refused to back down.

“Hey, like I said, You can hear me now, or you can pay me later,” he said. “Hey, then do something about it, okay? It’s a tool. Make it work for you.”

Comedian Conan O’Brien leaned into AI’s growing unpopularity during his address at Harvard’s commencement.

“Don’t worry, despite your fears, trust me when I say AI cannot replace you,” O’Brien said, adding, “It’ll be too busy replacing those creeps from Princeton, anyway.”

O’Brien also poked fun at the ways he imagined Harvard professors were catching students using AI.

“Luckily, AI is not a problem at Harvard,” O’Brien said. “Here, professors have been able to quickly flag students’ use of AI thanks to the sophisticated AI software they use to grade papers.”

Fashion designer Jeremy Scott took ripping AI literally when he spoke at the Kansas City Art Institute’s commencement ceremony.

Scott congratulated students on reaching the “threshold of a new beginning.”

“Sounds kind of cliched, right? Doesn’t sound authentic, does it? Sounds like you’ve heard it before, right? It’s because it’s AI,” he revealed.

Scott then ripped up his AI speech to cheers and applause from the audience. He then extolled what makes human artists truly different.

“Because you know what AI can’t do? It can’t do what you do. It can’t have an original idea,” he said. “It can’t even differentiate the difference between a good idea, a unique idea, and one that’s mediocre.”

Basketball legend and billionaire Magic Johnson impressed upon Tuskegee University graduates the importance of learning AI.

“AI is not going to replace you at your job,” Johnson said. “But somebody who knows AI will replace you at your job.”

Johnson, who delivered similar advice during a second commencement address at Stillman College, said students at historically Black colleges and universities need to recognize that AI is “such a huge opportunity for our people.”

“This is going to be a $15 trillion global opportunity by 2030,” Johnson said. “You have to be involved in AI. Very important.”

Comedian Ronny Chieng had a simple message for Harvard students: “Fuck AI.”

“I’m here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI,” Chieng said to cheers. “Kill it.”

Chieng told attendees at Harvard’s 2026 class day event that other graduation speakers telling students to master AI are missing the point.

“The creating is the fun part,” he said. “I know this platitude is almost worthy of AI, but the reason shortcuts to skip to the end aren’t always good is because the journey isn’t just how we acquire skills. The journey is the point of all of this.”

Journalist Fareed Zakaria told Bard graduates that society is asking the wrong questions about AI.

“So people naturally ask: ‘What will be left for human beings to do?'” he said. “But, perhaps that’s the wrong question. The better question is, ‘What does AI tell us about all the things we humans already do — and that are distinctive and irreplaceable?'”

Zakaria gave students “a trigger warning” that he was going to talk about AI in light of the response to Schmidt and other commencement speakers around the country who had been jeered when bringing up the technology.

“Feel free to get the booing out of the way,” he said.

The rest of Zakaria’s speech focused on HI, or human intelligence, the biology and resulting characteristics that make humans exceptional.

“A machine can write a sad poem, but it cannot weep at a funeral,” he said. “The more powerful AI becomes, the more we may rediscover how much we value the distinctly human.”