In recent weeks, a number of today’s most prominent people in technology—Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, AMD CEO Lisa Su, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, among others—took the stage at the university’s commencement to speak to the anxious Class of 2026, the first group that spent their entire college years and AI tools producing. (ChatGPT launches in November 2022, within their first year.) Across campuses, the industry leaders behind those spaces deliver a broadly similar message: embrace AI, but learn to master it. How that message got across, however, depended less on what was said and more on who said it—and, perhaps, where it was said.
A big difference played out between Schmidt at the University of Arizona and Huang at Carnegie Mellon. While Schmidt’s optimism about AI drew scorn and disappointment throughout his speech, Huang’s similar message was met with quiet respect.
To the south, at Middle Tennessee State University, Scott Borchetta, founder of the Big Machine Label Group (made famous by Taylor Swift), also faced consternation when he told graduates to “get on with it” while discussing the disruption of AI in the creative industries.
Meanwhile, at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, Apple founder Steve Wozniak received a standing ovation for a line that clearly answered the question: “You all have AI—real intelligence.”
Those different reactions were not the result of any one speech. If you listen closely to what they were saying, the text of those prepared words was very similar. What was different was the tone of the speech and the audience listening. If there was a pattern, students at elite institutions appeared to be more receptive to the pro-AI message than their peers at public universities. Huang spoke at a school widely considered one of the birthplaces of AI (where researchers developed the first AI computer program in the 1950s.) Last week, his rival (and distant relative), AMD’s Lisa Su, gave the commencement speech at her alma mater, MIT, where she was also warmly celebrated.
Of course, the person behind the speaker was just as important. Commencement speeches, especially at alma maters, are among the rare occasions when tech executives drop their corporate armor and offer something resembling personal advice. But they are also an unforgiving survey of dignity. Huang and Su, who are actively building the infrastructure that powers the AI boom, appear to be shaping the future in tangible ways while taking real business risks. Schmidt, by contrast, has long been seen as an out-of-touch capitalist and the poster child of the old, callous era of Big Tech. His insanely fast, sometimes tone-deaf delivery in Arizona amplified that perception.
The rapid emergence of AI tools in the past three to four years has reshaped the way students choose majors and think about careers. Although overall unemployment in the US remains relatively low, entry-level employment has a large contract. (They blame remote work, too, because employers are hesitant to hire new students from remote teams because of training challenges.) According to a recent study by the Federal Reserve, tThe unemployment rate for college students ages 22 to 27 rose to 5.7 percent, the highest level since 2014, outside of the pandemic years.
Against that backdrop, advice from technology leaders boils down to a simple theme: expect disruption, and adapt.
“My career began at the beginning of the PC revolution. Your career begins at the beginning of the AI revolution. I can’t see a more exciting time to start your life’s work,” Huang said. “It’s unlikely that AI will replace you, but someone is using AI better than you.”
“Technology itself doesn’t determine what the future looks like. The best people do,” Su said. “It needs people who know what to use it for—people with purpose, judgment, and courage; people who look at a difficult problem and say: this is important, and we can get it.”
And, stripped of the snake that greeted him in Arizona, Schmidt’s main message isn’t that different: AI will “affect every job, every classroom, every hospital, every workplace, every person, and every relationship.” But, he added, it’s only useful if people do the work to understand it. “I think the main thing is that we need, as a people, to maintain the kind of mindset that working hard, going through the difficulties of learning things is rewarding and rewarding, and that’s how you develop yourself,” he said.
