Eric Schmidt was booed multiple times on Friday during his commencement speech at the University of Arizona as the former Google CEO spoke about artificial intelligence and the choices the graduating class faces.
Schmidt, who led Google for a decade, opened by reflecting on his student years and the rise of the computer, noting that Time magazine named the computer its Person of the Year in 1982 and tracing its evolution into laptops, smartphones and the networks that followed.
He told graduates the computer connected people, democratized knowledge and lifted many out of poverty, and he warned that the same platforms that gave everyone a voice also degraded the public square by rewarding outrage and amplifying our worst instincts.
Schmidt placed artificial intelligence alongside those earlier changes, saying it has a parallel transformative impact and acknowledging the anxiety in the crowd. "I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you," he said, and later added, "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 is fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create, and I understand that fear."
He urged graduates not to accept a foregone conclusion. "If you’d let me make this point, please —" he said, before arguing they should choose a diversity of perspectives and engage with those they disagree with. "The point I’d like to make is choose a diversity of perspectives, including the perspective of the immigrant who has so often been the person who came to this country and made it better. America is at its best when we are the country that ambitious people want to come to. Let us not lose that."
Schmidt closed by congratulating the class and offering a direct charge: "The future is not yet finished. It is now your turn to shape it." The remarks drew repeated boos from parts of the crowd, underscoring a sharp, immediate reaction to a senior tech leader discussing the risks and rewards of AI on a graduation stage.
The speech was delivered at the University of Arizona commencement and comes amid a small but visible pattern of student hostility toward commencement speakers who broach artificial intelligence. Earlier this month, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield was similarly booed at a University of Central Florida commencement after mentioning AI; she had called it "The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution."
University of Arizona spokesperson Mitch Zak defended the invitation, saying Schmidt was asked to speak because of his "extraordinary leadership and global contributions in technology, innovation and scientific advancement," and that "He helped lead Google’s rise into one of the world’s most influential technology companies and continues to advance research and discovery through major philanthropic and scientific initiatives, including partnerships that support important work at the University of Arizona."
The contrast is the story’s tension: the university’s rationale for bringing a high-profile tech figure into a public graduation ceremony, and the visible refusal by some graduates to receive his reassurances. Schmidt acknowledged that refusal on stage, urging freedom, open debate, equality and engagement—an appeal that landed unevenly with an audience that both heard his explanation and expressed its unease.
Two commencements, two booed speakers and a shared subject — artificial intelligence — suggest this is not an isolated moment but an emerging pattern of confrontation over how AI is framed in public life. Schmidt’s speech left the same instruction he began with: the technology’s arc is not preordained, and the class of 2026 has "real power to shape how AI develops." Whether that claim will calm or inflame graduates remains the central question after Friday’s boos: a generation told it can write the future is already testing how loudly it will resist the voices that try to tell it how.
