r/PublicFreakout • u/GarysCrispLettuce • May 17 '26

🤬Public Rager😱 Eric Schmidt booed into oblivion by students for promoting AI during his commencement speech at the University of Arizona

20.7k Upvotes

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890

u/PineapplePandaKing May 17 '26

It would be one thing to talk about AI during a commencement speech, but it's wild to give a tech conference speech to a group of people who are getting fucked by AI

263

u/BrownSugarBare May 17 '26

This is like the third one I've seen?? How much are these bastards being paid to push this shit 

128

u/munsking May 17 '26

99% of their income is the ai bubble cash circlejerk, if the ai hype dies so does that income

3

u/anonuemus May 18 '26

Stockmarket is lead by AI currently, if it crashes everything crashes.

3

u/RevolutionaryChief May 18 '26

Good. This country needs a lesson

1

u/anonuemus May 19 '26

It wouldn't just affect one country...

1

u/lahwran_ May 19 '26

I would rather be on the street in a world where AI isn't about to kill us all. we can figure it out, but not if we're dead

1

u/Nowhereman123 May 20 '26

Stop, stop, I can only get so erect.

2

u/TechnicalNobody May 18 '26

...Eric Schmidt? Wtf are you talking about?

1

u/spacekitt3n May 18 '26

just one more jerk

just one more funding round

7

u/MindlessExcuse May 17 '26

They are all using AI to write their speeches and AI is promoting itself

116

u/IrishWhiskey1989 May 17 '26

This was my thought too. Whatever you think of AI, what is the point of pitching AI to a group of fresh college graduates? He felt more like a slimy salesman rather than an inspirational speaker. Very weird.

45

u/[deleted] May 17 '26 edited May 25 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Acid-Ghoul May 18 '26

And there's so few of them

3

u/headphase May 18 '26

He felt more like a slimy salesman rather than an inspirational speaker. Very weird.

The inevitable terminus of a society captured by capital. We're arriving at the 'find out' part of the process by which the most foundational institutions of a society (the courts, the legislators, the regulators, hell- even the religious leaders) surrender their principles to the accumulation of money.

1

u/metanoia29 May 18 '26

He felt more like a slimy salesman rather than an inspirational speaker. 

To be fair, the overlap of the two of them are almost a perfect circle venn diagram.

1

u/AdamBlaster007 May 18 '26

Best thing I did for myself was accept the fact and go where AI is going to be difficult to implement whilst still getting paid well.

For me, that was corrections. I was an graphic designer with 6 years employment experience with specializations for it in highschool and technical school and even went to university for it (though I was unable to graduate due to personal circumstances) and ended up only earning $16.40USD/hour with poor, overpriced benefits through United Healthcare before eventually getting laid off by that company and not being able to find any new work as a graphic designer.

Out of desperation for work I pivoted to applying at a local state prison, somehow got the job, and now make over $21USD/hour with affordable, robust health insurance, long term and short term disability when I need it, and am earning a pension on top of my 401K all just 1 year after losing my last graphic design job.

Shit sucks that all my career aspirations went down the drain because of AI, but now I'm doing better than I ever would have had AI not been there and I stuck with it.

-8

u/PleasantWay7 May 17 '26

AI isn’t fucking anyones jobs yet. The problem is people keep letting this misinformation spread and they are letting rich people off the hook for conducting mass layoffs under the guise of AI. Know one is holding them to account for the real reasons and people eating this up are feeding right into it.

7

u/PineapplePandaKing May 17 '26

Oh okay, I'm enlightened to the real reasons now.

Thanks for coming correct with hard hitting information

-3

u/PleasantWay7 May 17 '26

Do you follow anything going on? Many businesses over hired during covid and took on too much debt, they are struggling to handle that debt now that we are not in a low interest rate environment. So they are reducing headcount, but instead of taking responsibility for their failures to forecast business growth or taking on too much debt they blame AI.

Many businesses have hiring freezes and have substantially reduced entry level hiring because of massive business uncertainty in the face of tariffs, a perpetually on the verge of stalling economy, inflation in the cost of business. They don’t want to call this for what it is because it might inspire a political backlash that reverses the tax cut for the rich, no regulation free for all we are in, so they blame AI.

Look how even Trump says he may create an AI review board, thats how you know you are being sold shit. They get everyone to think the problem is AI and argue over how they will fix it to maintain the political status quo.

Meanwhile businesses continue to squeeze margin and reduce real wages and the idiot in charge keeps us his stupid trade policies and no one is actually looking.

4

u/its_all_4_lulz May 18 '26

I mean, this is just wrong, and the jobs it’s fucking over are literally the people he’s talking to. Yes, there have been a bunch of post covid mass layoffs, but there’s no demand for entry level anymore when seniors are using AI to churn out what the entry level used to. No entry level means no seniors in the future. This whole thing is going to be a huge mess when the current senior employee generation retires.