Eric Schmidt got booed at a commencement speech last Friday. The former Google CEO was delivering the address at the University of Arizona when he started talking about AI and the crowd turned on him. Students drowned him out with boos. Multiple times.

Schmidt acknowledged the anxiety, according to reports. He said he understood fears “that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating.” Then he apparently kept going with the usual tech optimist talking points. And the students kept booing.

Good for them.

Look, I don’t think Schmidt is a villain here. He’s done plenty of interesting work, and he was probably trying to be inspiring. But there’s something deeply tone-deaf about standing in front of people who are about to enter one of the most uncertain job markets in decades and telling them to be excited about the technology that’s actively making their prospects worse.

Because let’s be clear about what’s happening right now. AI isn’t some abstract future concern for these graduates. It’s already reshaping entry-level work. Companies are experimenting with AI to handle customer service, write copy, generate code, create marketing materials, and do basic data analysis. Those are exactly the kinds of roles new graduates typically fill to get their foot in the door.

The usual response from tech leaders is that AI will create new kinds of jobs, just like every previous wave of automation. Maybe that’s true. But “eventually this will work out” isn’t much comfort when you’re 22 and trying to start a career. The timeline matters. The disruption matters. The fact that you might need completely different skills than the ones you just spent four years and a fortune acquiring matters.

The trust deficit

What made the Arizona students boo wasn’t just anxiety about AI itself. It was hearing those reassurances from someone like Schmidt, a tech billionaire who has every incentive to downplay the downsides and talk up the promise. The same week Schmidt was giving his speech, trust was the central theme in the final days of the Musk-OpenAI trial, with questions swirling around whether OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is trustworthy.

This isn’t a coincidence. We’re watching a broader collapse of trust in tech leadership’s promises about AI. For years, the message has been: don’t worry, we’ve got this, it’ll be amazing. But the people delivering that message keep getting caught being less than honest about the risks, the limitations, and their own motivations.

Schmidt’s own track record doesn’t help. This is someone who has consistently championed aggressive AI development and downplayed concerns about its impact. He’s not some neutral observer trying to help students understand their future. He’s someone with significant financial stakes in AI companies and a long history of tech boosterism.

What honesty would sound like

Here’s what an honest commencement speech about AI in 2026 might include: Yes, this technology is going to displace a lot of work. No, we don’t really know how fast or which jobs exactly. No, there isn’t a clear plan for helping people whose careers get disrupted. Yes, the benefits will probably accrue heavily to people who already have money and power. And yes, a lot of the people building and profiting from this stuff are making decisions without much accountability to the rest of society.

You can still end on a hopeful note after saying all that. You can talk about how graduates will need to be adaptable, how they should look for roles that play to human strengths, how there will be opportunities in figuring out how to use these tools responsibly. But you have to start with the reality.

The students who booed Schmidt weren’t being rude. They were being honest about what they’re actually feeling. And maybe that honesty is more valuable than another round of inspirational pablum from someone who won’t face any consequences if the AI transition goes badly.

Microsoft just retired Teams’ Together Mode, that pandemic-era feature that used AI to place your head in a virtual conference room. It launched during a moment of crisis, promised to make remote work feel more human, and now it’s being quietly shelved because it turned out to be gimmicky and nobody really wanted it.

That feels like a metaphor. Tech companies keep rolling out AI features and telling us they’ll transform everything, but a lot of it is solving problems nobody has or making things slightly worse in ways that are hard to articulate. And when it doesn’t work out, they just move on to the next thing.

The graduates booing Schmidt aren’t anti-technology. They’re just tired of being told to be grateful for disruption they didn’t ask for and can’t control. That’s not cynicism. It’s realism. And right now, realism is in short supply at the podium.