It's graduation season, which means people as cool as Harrison Ford step in front of a mic to excite the next generation of Indian Joneses. It's also a time when commencement speakers tackle gritty topics like social justice, war, climate change, the common good...and AI.
AI, which is now as pervasive as the air we breathe, would not appear to be a hot button topic, at least to Florida Real Estate Executive Gloria Caulfield, who, while speaking to University of Central Florida's 2026 graduating class told them, "Artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution."
The cascade of boos was so swift and angry that Caulfield paused, stepped back, and, clearly confused, said, "What happened?" Then, I guess hoping for support, she looked to some of the officials up there on stage with her and said, "Woo, I struck a chord."
Caulfield turned back to the graduates and, perhaps starting to sense a shift in the crowd's mood, she asked beseechingly, "May I finish?"
Ah, but there was another shoe to drop. You see, on AI Time, you get all the moods in half the time.
"Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives," said a still grimly smiling Caulfield.
The graduates burst into applause and lusty cheers. Caulfield turned back to her stage mates and threw up her hands, seeming to say, "What's going on here?"
Just ask the parents
Last week, my wife showed me a lengthy comment by one of the parents in a Facebook Grown and Flown Group. The author was decrying the sorry state of the job market for her young-adult children.
In some cases, they were learning that jobs they had trained for, entry-level content creation, for instance, were gone or in short supply. They had sent out dozens and dozens of resumes and cover letters with no response. The other child decried how most of their resumes were rejected by AI before they even reached a human. In general, they were seeing that the foot-in-the-door jobs once available in most industries were drying up because that kind of basic work could be done by AI.
Internships, the places where you build your resumes, are drying up, and now virtually none are available for her children. She writes, "'Get experience.' HOW? Where? If no one will hire you for the jobs where you can get experience."
In the same forum, another parent shared a lengthy post titled, "I'm Terrified AI is Going to Steal My Kid's Futures," where she ponders what her college and high-school-age children studying journalism and business, respectively, will do in the future. "I'm lying awake at night wondering if I'm sending them into a world that has no place for them."
She also notes how entry-level jobs are disappearing. "Junior copywriters? AI can write the copy. Financial analysts? AI can run the models. Graphic designers? AI can create the designs. Paralegals? AI can do the research. Marketing coordinators? AI can manage the campaigns. What can our kids do that machines cannot?"
Canaries in the coal mine
What the college students and the children of these likely Gen X parents have in common is that they are all part of the Gen Z cohort.
These young people were likely between 20 and 26 years old, fitting neatly in the Gen Z space, roughly 14-29 years old. Yes, they're all digital natives, which means they've never known a world without technology and have spent most of their lives very online.
AI would not be the first part of their digital experience to go awry. Multiple generations have been grappling with the negative effects of too much screen time, and, sometimes, social media, to say nothing of fake news spread on these platforms.
AI, however, is something different. Maybe it's because of the speed. AI Time means technology spreads, changes, and is adopted at triple the speed of previous tech innovations. While exciting, it also means none of us is truly prepared for it. Those graduating students likely entered FSU four years ago in a world where AI was something reserved for laboratories and robots, and now graduate into a world where it's prepared to be their coworker, or worse.
What Caufield got was a smack in the face of anecdotal evidence that Gen Z is not fully on board with this tech epoch. Perhaps, though, she should have, as some have suggested, read the room.
That young people are not as thoroughly on board with AI as some older generations, and especially industries and companies is not news.
A recent Gallup poll put this in more stark terms. In a survey of 1,500 14-to-29-year-olds, they found Gen Z AI adoption has flattened out, and "excitement for AI dropped 14 percentage points, hopefulness fell nine points, and anger rose by nine points."
That's right. Gen Z isn't just worried about AI or, as the survey noted experiencing rising anxiety about it. They are angry.
Instead of seeing AI as a powerful tool to spark and extend ideation, researchers say Gen Z worries that reliance on it may be lowering "cognitive and professional skills".
Love it or hate it, AI isn't going anywhere
It's not that they think they can outrun AI. Most of those surveyed who are still in grade school acknowledge the need to understand how to use AI when they enter higher education. "48% of students now think they will need to know how to use AI in their future jobs or career," noted the survey.
Overall, though, Gen Z simply doesn't trust AI. "In the workplace, Gen Z workers are more than three times as likely to say AI’s risks outweigh its benefits, and trust in AI‑assisted work is far lower than it is for work produced by humans."
The reality is these FSU graduates are facing a job market that's already been refashioned by AI, and as they apply for jobs or even enter the workforce, they are finding that it's made the road (assuming there is one) harder to navigate than ever.
The boos, then, are as unsurprising as is the wistfulness for a time before AI. Unfortunately, that time has passed. The Age of AI is upon us, and, like it or not, it will be up to these new generations to navigate it, control it, and ensure that it doesn't destroy us.
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