In desperate times, graduates find hope in humiliating tech CEOs
In desperate times, graduates find hope in humiliating tech CEOs
在绝望的时代，毕业生们在羞辱科技公司高管中找到了希望
University graduates are booing and heckling corporate executives who praise AI during their commencement ceremonies, and the only people who seem to be genuinely surprised by this are the executives themselves. 大学毕业生们正在毕业典礼上对那些吹捧人工智能的企业高管发出嘘声和嘲讽，而唯一对此感到真正惊讶的人似乎正是这些高管自己。
In a procession of viral videos, 2026 commencement speakers like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt face loud and sustained jeers from students after praising AI and describing the technology as both inevitable and mandatory. The videos have clearly struck a chord among young people entering a bleak job market in an increasingly unstable world. 在一系列疯传的视频中，2026届毕业典礼的演讲嘉宾（如前谷歌CEO埃里克·施密特）在赞美人工智能并将其描述为“不可避免且必须接受”的技术后，遭到了学生们持续不断的响亮嘘声。这些视频显然引起了年轻人的共鸣，他们正步入一个日益动荡的世界，面对着黯淡的就业市场。
“They deserve everything they’re getting,” Penny Oliver, who recently graduated with a political science degree from George Mason University, told The Verge. “Some would argue they’re getting off kind of lightly. I’m not saying they deserve to get hurt, but it just shows a level of arrogance and a disconnect when you see that.” “他们罪有应得，”最近从乔治梅森大学获得政治学学位的佩妮·奥利弗告诉《The Verge》。“有些人甚至会觉得他们受到的惩罚还太轻了。我不是说他们应该受到伤害，但当你看到那种场景时，它恰恰暴露了一种傲慢和脱节。”
Schmidt was met with a chorus of boos at the University of Arizona last week while lecturing graduates to accept the technology as part of their futures. “When someone offers you a seat on a rocket ship, you don’t ask which seat. You just get on,” Schmidt told the room of angry graduates. The reason for the outrage should have been obvious. As journalist Marisa Kabas put it, “these young people have already been forced onto the ship and there aren’t enough seats.” 上周在亚利桑那大学，施密特在劝说毕业生接受人工智能作为未来一部分时，遭到了全场嘘声。“当有人给你提供火箭船上的座位时，你不会问是哪个座位，你只会坐上去，”施密特对台下愤怒的毕业生说道。愤怒的原因显而易见。正如记者玛丽莎·卡巴斯所言：“这些年轻人已经被强行塞上了船，但船上的座位根本不够。”
The week before, Gloria Caulfield, an executive at a property development company, expressed shock after receiving a similarly icy reception from arts and humanities students at the University of Central Florida, where she described AI as “the next industrial revolution.” At Middle Tennessee State University, Scott Borchetta, a music industry CEO known for helping launch Taylor Swift’s career, gave a boisterous and patronizing speech mocking AI hecklers and telling students critical of AI to simply “deal with it.” 前一周，一家房地产开发公司的高管格洛丽亚·考菲尔德在佛罗里达中央大学也遭遇了类似的冷遇。当时她将人工智能描述为“下一次工业革命”，随后对艺术与人文专业学生的反应表示震惊。在田纳西州立大学，以助力泰勒·斯威夫特成名而闻名的音乐产业CEO斯科特·波切塔发表了一场喧闹且居高临下的演讲，嘲讽那些质疑人工智能的学生，并告诉他们要学会“接受现实”。
And with graduation season ongoing and the online videos bringing anti-AI sentiment to a boiling point, it’s likely these incidents won’t be the last. 随着毕业季的持续，网络视频将反人工智能的情绪推向了沸点，这些事件很可能不会是最后一次。
“Of course people are going to be mad and of course they’re going to boo. Why shouldn’t they?” said Oliver. “They just spent tens of thousands of dollars on an education that is supposed to get them more opportunities, and here comes this guy [Schmidt] who could never work another day in his life and still be very comfortable and well-off saying ‘Hey, you should really get on the bandwagon of this technology that’s going to replace you.’” “人们当然会生气，当然会发出嘘声。为什么不呢？”奥利弗说。“他们刚刚花费数万美元接受教育，本以为能获得更多机会，结果这个家伙（施密特）——他这辈子就算一天班都不上也能过得非常舒适富足——却跑来对他们说：‘嘿，你们真的应该加入这股即将取代你们的技术浪潮。’”
For many graduates, the surprised and contentious reactions of the speakers reveal a massive disconnect between the tech evangelists aggressively pushing AI and the young people being left to deal with its many well-documented consequences, which threaten everything from the environment to our critical thinking skills. 对于许多毕业生来说，演讲者们表现出的惊讶和争辩态度，揭示了那些积极推行人工智能的“技术布道者”与那些被迫承担其后果的年轻人之间存在巨大的鸿沟。这些后果已被充分记录，威胁着从环境到批判性思维能力的一切。
Young people seem to particularly despise the attitude on display: Not only do you have to accept this technology we created that is the cause of your existential dread and rapidly evaporating job prospects, the speakers seem to say, but you also have to like it. 年轻人似乎特别鄙视这种态度：演讲者们似乎在说，不仅你们必须接受我们创造的这项导致你们存在焦虑和就业前景迅速消失的技术，而且你们还必须喜欢它。
“It demonstrates a complete lack of being in touch with real people, and also it does not surprise me,” Austin Burkett, a game designer who recently graduated with an MFA at the NYU Game Center, told The Verge. “这表明他们完全脱离了现实人群，而且我对此并不感到惊讶，”最近从纽约大学游戏中心获得艺术硕士学位的游戏设计师奥斯汀·伯克特告诉《The Verge》。
Burkett is one of the lucky ones. Before graduation, he found a job working on Pocket Bard, a mobile app used by tabletop roleplaying gamers, who tend to be staunchly anti-AI. But he says that some of his former classmates have been forced to take on fleeting gig work training the AI models that are replacing them, and that graduates are right to be incensed at corporate executives with a smirking “adopt-or-die” attitude on the technology. 伯克特是幸运儿之一。毕业前，他找到了一份工作，参与开发桌面角色扮演游戏玩家使用的移动应用“Pocket Bard”，而这些玩家通常是坚定的反人工智能者。但他表示，他的一些同学被迫从事短暂的零工，去训练那些正在取代他们的AI模型。他认为，毕业生们对那些带着嘲讽态度、鼓吹“不采用就淘汰”的企业高管感到愤怒是完全正确的。
“These are not the people who have to worry about rent, and they’re not the people who have to worry about their job being replaced,” Burkett added. “The people who are saying ‘it’s just a tool’ are the ones who can afford to say that. It puts the blame on the individual, and puts forth this myth that these institutions and systems and companies have no ulterior motive and no reasons to make a profit.” “这些人不需要担心房租，也不需要担心工作被取代，”伯克特补充道。“那些说‘这只是个工具’的人，是因为他们有资本这么说。这种说法将责任推给了个人，并散布了一种神话，即这些机构、系统和公司没有任何不可告人的动机，也没有任何追求利润的理由。”
To be fair, student receptions to commencement speakers promoting AI often vary depending on the majors of those in the audience. The strongest reactions seen in viral videos have come mainly from liberal arts and humanities students. 平心而论，学生对推崇人工智能的毕业典礼演讲者的反应，往往取决于观众的专业。在疯传视频中看到的最强烈反应，主要来自文科和人文学科的学生。
Many of those graduates include students hoping to enter creative professions that are facing existential threats thanks to generative AI tools. At CalArts, President Ravi Rajan was booed off stage by graduates of the legendary California art school, which is well known as an incubator for talent in the animation industry. Rajan has faced heavy criticism after eliminating creative programs and pushing AI adoption at the university through corporate partnerships with tech companies. 这些毕业生中许多人希望进入创意行业，而这些行业正因生成式人工智能工具面临生存威胁。在加州艺术学院，校长拉维·拉詹被这所传奇艺术学校的毕业生嘘下了台，该校以动画产业人才孵化器而闻名。拉詹因削减创意课程并通过与科技公司的企业合作在校内推行人工智能而面临严厉批评。
The student anger is coming to a head at a time when young people in most fields face intense pressure from the tech and business world to adopt generative AI tools — even as employers use those same tools to justify hiring freezes and mass layoffs. While polling shows that students and Gen Z are some of the most frequent users of AI tools, they are also extremely skeptical of Silicon Valley and have become some of the technology’s biggest critics. 学生们的愤怒在此时达到顶峰，因为大多数领域的年轻人都面临着来自科技和商业界的巨大压力，被要求采用生成式人工智能工具——尽管雇主们正利用同样的工具来为冻结招聘和大规模裁员辩护。虽然民调显示学生和Z世代是人工智能工具最频繁的使用者之一，但他们也对硅谷持极度怀疑态度，并已成为该技术最大的批评者之一。
That’s not a surprise considering that young people are regularly witnessing the technology’s failure to deliver on its most basic promises. At a commencement ceremony for Glendale Community College in Arizona, the room swelled with angry boos after the college president revealed that the school’s new AI system had failed to read out more than half the students’ names as they walked onstage to receive their diplomas. 考虑到年轻人经常目睹这项技术无法兑现其最基本的承诺，这并不令人惊讶。在亚利桑那州格伦代尔社区学院的毕业典礼上，当校长透露学校的新AI系统在学生上台领取毕业证书时未能读出超过一半学生的名字后，现场爆发了愤怒的嘘声。