Jun 1, 2026
Mentioning AI in 2026 commencement speeches is hot right now, and that’s probably because it’s an effective way to encourage audience participation. Whether speakers are for or against the technology, the graduating class will absolutely let them know how they feel about it.
Just look at the University of Central Florida, where boos drowned out healthcare executive Gloria Caulfield after calling AI ”the next industrial revolution.” Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt got a similar reaction at the University of Arizona.
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Then there’s Scott Borchetta. On May 9, the founder and CEO of Big Machine Records delivered a commencement speech at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro — the same college that was renamed in his honor last August after he donated $15 million. He, like so many others, was booed by graduating students after praising AI. Unlike some speakers who appeared flummoxed by the audible disapproval, Borchetta pushed back.
“AI is rewriting production as we sit here,” Borchetta told the crowd. When the boos came, he said, “I know it. Deal with it. Like I said, it’s a tool. Hey, like I said, you can hear me now, or you can pay me later.”
The line, while a challenge to the graduating class, was met with laughter.
The genie won’t go back in the bottle
Borchetta opened by walking graduates through the disruptions he’d witnessed over four decades in the music business.
“I’ve lived the changes of the last four decades of the record business and have helped shape many of them,” he said. “Our biggest challenge today, pretty easy guess: AI.”
His speech leaned heavily on the concept of disruption, particularly the arrival of Napster in 1999. He recounted how record-label executives, panicked by free downloads, sued their own customers — a strategy that famously backfired when the Recording Industry of America targeted, among others, a 65-year-old grandmother.
Napster collapsed within two years, he reminded the crowd, but the streaming model it inspired permanently restructured how the industry made money.
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“[AI] is admittedly a much bigger genie, and it ain’t getting back in the bottle, but it is a tool,” he said. “The things you learned in your first year here may already be obsolete.
“Invest in the skill and art of creation and not the platform or the system. Platforms and systems come and go,” he added.
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Class of 2026 isn’t buying AI
College grads are feeling uneasy about entering the workforce.
Entry-level job postings in the United States are down roughly 35% since January 2023, according to labor research firm Revelio Labs. Some tech and data roles have declined by as much as two-thirds. About 42.5% of recent college graduates are underemployed, the highest rate since the pandemic. A Mercer survey of 825 C-suite executives found the share planning to cut junior roles in the next two years jumped from 17% to 43% in a single year.
MTSU, for its part, issued a statement after the provocative commencement speech saying it “understand[s] and remain[s] compassionate about our students’ concerns and questions about AI affecting their careers.”
Borchetta tried to end the speech on a softer note.
“Your judgment cannot be disrupted. Your taste cannot be automated. The mechanisms change. If they do, you adapt,” he said, closing his speech. “We’re counting on you.”
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Dave Smith is the VP of Content at Wise Publishing and Editor-in-Chief at Moneywise and Money.ca. His work has also been published in Fortune, Business Insider, Newsweek, ABC News, and USA Today.
