Future of Work

The Class of 2026 Isn’t Buying It

When former Google CEO Eric Schmidt mentioned artificial intelligence during his University of Arizona commencement speech, the crowd booed.

By Conor Healy

May 26, 2026

When former Google CEO Eric Schmidt mentioned artificial intelligence during his University of Arizona commencement speech, the crowd booed. At the University of Central Florida, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield got the same reaction after calling AI “the next industrial revolution.” She turned to the stage, hands raised in confusion. “What happened?” she asked. “Okay, I struck a chord.”

Then Caulfield tried a different line. “Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives.”

The crowd erupted in cheers.

The Gen Z AI backlash is not a passing reaction. It is showing up in the data. According to a Gallup survey released in April, only 18% of young Americans feel hopeful about artificial intelligence. Anger toward the technology rose from 22% to 31% in a single year. Nearly half of Gen Z workers say the risks of AI in the workforce outweigh the benefits.

The speeches are not landing because the audience knows something the speakers do not seem to grasp: they are being told to embrace the thing that might replace them.

18% Hopeful, 31% Angry

The Gallup survey, conducted with the Walton Family Foundation and GSV Ventures, tracked attitudes among 1,500 Americans aged 14 to 29. The findings are consistent across nearly every measure, and the trajectory is moving in one direction.

Excitement about AI dropped 14 percentage points in one year, falling to 22%. Hopefulness dropped nine points, to 18%. Anger rose nine points, from 22% to 31%. Even daily AI users, who generally hold more favourable views of the technology, have not become more positive over the past year. The people using AI the most are not becoming its advocates.

The trust numbers are starker. Less than three in ten Gen Z workers trust work that was assisted by AI. Virtually none trust work produced by AI alone. When asked whether AI helps or hurts learning, 80% said using it as a shortcut makes learning more difficult.

These are not abstract concerns. About half of college students surveyed said they have considered changing their majors because of AI’s impact on the job market. One in six said they have already switched.

44% Are Sabotaging It

The most striking finding came from a separate survey by WRITER, a generative AI company based in San Francisco: 44% of Gen Z workers admitted to actively sabotaging their employer’s AI initiatives.

They are not passively sceptical. Forty-four percent admitted to deliberately undermining their employer’s AI rollout.

The reasons, according to follow-up reporting, include fears of job displacement, frustration with security vulnerabilities in AI systems, and the complaint that these tools add more work rather than reduce it. Efficiency was the promise. Many report the opposite.

Futurism described the pattern bluntly: young workers “risk becoming part of a permanent underclass in the AI economy.” I’ve written previously in my article “AI and the Permanent Underclass” about how this underclass is forming. The short version: when returns flow to capital instead of labour, skills stop mattering. You can master every AI tool available. If you don’t own equity, you’re in the underclass anyway.

The immediate problem is simpler. AI is relatively good at automating tasks that early-career workers would traditionally perform. Entry-level jobs disappear. The pipeline into the workforce narrows. The skills that would normally develop in someone’s twenties never get built.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged this dynamic last year, saying AI is probably a factor in dismal employment rates among young graduates in the United States. The Irish government reported a similar link between slowing youth employment and AI adoption earlier this year.

500 Applications

Vaishali Hireraddi is 23, a graduate student at UC Davis. She has applied to 500 jobs. “Every other day, a new AI agent is being released in the market,” she told Semafor. “What am I doing with my life?”

Her situation is not unusual. Entry-level hiring has contracted across multiple industries. The roles that remain are flooded with applicants. The advice from career centres and LinkedIn influencers is to “leverage AI” and “upskill,” but the tools being recommended are the same tools that eliminated the jobs in the first place.

The Gallup data suggests this is registering. Young people are not rejecting AI because they do not understand it. Over half use it daily. They just do not believe it will help them.

Cheers at Carnegie Mellon, Boos at UCF

Not every commencement speech about AI gets booed. When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang addressed graduates at Carnegie Mellon University, he told them AI would “accelerate the expansion of human knowledge” and help solve problems “once beyond our reach.” The crowd applauded enthusiastically.

The difference is not about delivery. Carnegie Mellon is a STEM school. Its graduates build AI systems. They see the technology as expanding their professional value, not threatening it.

UCF’s College of Arts and Humanities produces writers, designers, journalists, and media professionals. The University of Arizona graduates teachers, marketers, social workers, and communications specialists. These are fields where AI is discussed not as an opportunity but as a replacement. When someone in a suit tells you the thing that might take your job is actually the next industrial revolution, the applause does not come naturally.

Software engineer Cabel Sasser observed on Bluesky after watching the UCF video: “When you’re inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. But everybody isn’t.”

“An Extraordinary Evening”

After the UCF ceremony, Caulfield posted on Instagram describing the evening as “extraordinary” and saying she was “humbled” to have spent the night “igniting optimism and potential in our future leaders.”

The video tells a different story. One graduating student yelled “AI sucks” loud enough to be picked up by the arena microphones. Another, Diana Eletr, posted afterward: “I’m embarrassed to have had to endure the most embarrassing, unskippable, tone-deaf, ad-like commencement.” She called Caulfield a “corporate mouthpiece.”

A Reddit user who attended wrote that Caulfield had opened her speech by praising Jeff Bezos. “It was a very out-of-touch and controversial topic to speak about,” they said. Another user suggested the reaction might matter beyond one graduation ceremony: “I’m glad for the booing. I’m glad she was caught off guard. Hopefully, people in the right places will notice the significance of the response and adjust a few things.”

Schmidt, at Arizona, handled it differently. “I know what many of you are feeling about that,” he said after the boos. “I can hear you.” He called the fears “rational” but argued that graduates should help shape AI rather than reject it. “The question is not whether AI will shape the world,” he said. “It will. The question is whether you will have shaped artificial intelligence.”

The framing assumes the audience has agency in that process. For someone who has applied to 500 jobs and watched entry-level roles evaporate, that assumption may not hold.

Gen Z Has Already Overtaken Boomers

Seventy percent of Americans now say AI is moving too fast, according to polling cited by Semafor. Over half have negative views of it. Among young people, the sentiment is worse and worsening.

The technology industry is preparing for a massive increase in AI demand. The largest companies are investing hundreds of billions of dollars on the assumption that adoption will accelerate. But Gen Z is the generation most likely to enter and grow within the workforce over the next decade. They have already overtaken Baby Boomers in total workforce participation. Scepticism at 31% and rising, sabotage at 44%, trust in AI-assisted work below 30%. If those numbers hold, the adoption curve may not follow the trajectory the industry is projecting.

The commencement speeches will continue. Tech executives will keep telling graduates to embrace the future. Whether anyone under 30 is still listening, and whether it matters if they are not, remains to be seen.