May 14, 2026
College graduation is generally a celebratory time. Students have put in a tremendous amount of work and, if just for a moment, are being rewarded for that, with the troubles of the outside world being shut out. That is, of course, unless you happened to be graduating at the University of Central Florida on May 8.
Gloria Caulfield (1), the vice president of strategic alliances for real estate firm Tavistock Development Company, was selected to give the commencement speech to this year's graduates. Things were going fairly well until she got six minutes into her address and decided to not just talk about AI, but to sing its praises.
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"The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution," she told the crowd (2). Those now-former students, however, were not having any of it. She was immediately hit with a wave of "boos" (3) that only grew louder.
That praise of AI came as many of those students are concerned the technology will hurt their chances of getting a job, whether immediately or in the years to come. A study (4) by 11x, an AI company that develops autonomous "digital workers," found that 80% of college seniors believe AI is cutting entry-level job opportunities.
'What happened?'
Caulfield was caught off guard by the reaction to her comment. She turned to school officials, laughing, and asked "What happened?" Then turning back to the grads, she asked in a flustered manner, "Okay, I struck a chord. May I finish?"
Collecting herself, she tried to move on, saying, "Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives…" That led to a round of applause as loud as the first round of boos. Caulfield threw up her hands and, laughing again, turned back to the school officials.
She pushed forward, spending the next three minutes making her point, which was that the job market has faced uncertain times before, such as in the early days of the internet, but always came through stronger. That didn't stop her from having to pause for boos a few more times.
"I love it. Passion. Let's go," she said after one of them.
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The AI threat to graduates
Caulfield's not wrong about the job market pushing through scary times, but that doesn't make it any less anxiety-provoking in the short term, especially for people facing looming student loan payments.
An AP poll released last month (5) found that roughly 7 out of 10 U.S. adults believe the country's economy is "poor," up from about two-thirds in March. And a Gallup poll (6) last year found that just 43% of Americans aged 15 to 34 said it was a good time to find a job. That was 21 percentage points lower than for Americans aged 55 and older.
"Youth optimism about the U.S. job market has fallen sharply in 2024 and 2025, even as the worst of the pandemic disruptions and inflation have receded," Gallup said.
"While optimism has sunk among all youth demographics, the biggest declines have been among young women, the most educated and those not already working full-time for an employer. Young graduates who haven't yet found full-time jobs are most pessimistic. This may partly reflect anxiety about automation and artificial intelligence displacing entry-level roles, though the data do not measure this directly."
Article Sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our ethics and guidelines.
Tavistock Development Company (1); X (formerly Twitter) (2); YouTube (3); Business Wire (4); AP News (5); Gallup (6)
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Chris Morris is a veteran journalist with more than 35 years of experience at many of the internet's biggest news outlets. In addition to his activities as a writer, reporter and editor, Chris is also a frequent panel moderator and speaker at major conferences, including CES and South by Southwest.
