Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed multiple times Friday while discussing artificial intelligence during a commencement speech at the University of Arizona, a sharp interruption that turned a graduation address into a public rebuke. Schmidt, who led Google for a decade, had been speaking about the promise and peril of new technologies when parts of the crowd pushed back.
Schmidt opened by looking back on his own student years and on the rise of the computer, which Time magazine named its “Person of the Year” in 1982. He traced how the computer evolved into the laptop and smartphone and spread through the internet and social media, saying the technology connected people, democratized knowledge and lifted many out of poverty. But he also said those same platforms degraded the public square, rewarding outrage, amplifying people’s worst instincts and coarsening the way people speak to each other and treat each other.
He then drew a direct parallel between artificial intelligence and that earlier wave of change, telling graduates that many in their generation fear the future has already been written. He said there is fear that the machines are coming, the jobs are evaporating, the climate is breaking, politics is fractured and they are inheriting a mess they did not create. But Schmidt said the future remains unwritten, and told the graduating class of 2026 that it has real power to shape how AI develops.
That line drew more disapproval. Schmidt asked the audience, “If you’d let me make this point, please —” before pressing ahead with a call for freedom, open debate, equality and a willingness to engage with people they disagree with. He urged the graduates to 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.” He added that America is at its best when it is the country ambitious people want to come to, and warned, “Let us not lose that.”
The University of Arizona said Schmidt was invited because of his extraordinary leadership and global contributions in technology, innovation and scientific advancement. Mitch Zak, a university spokesperson, said Schmidt 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.
The booing fits a broader backlash against AI references at commencement speeches. Earlier this month, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield was also booed at a University of Central Florida graduation after saying, “The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.” Schmidt, by contrast, tried to cast AI as a force that graduates can still steer. He ended by congratulating the class and telling them, “The future is not yet finished. It is now your turn to shape it.”
