The Big Story: US students on why they booed their pro-AI graduation speakers: “They’re not reading the room”
“These tech executives are not reading the room … These kids have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a degree that they don’t know will serve them well.”
This is not another column about AI
By David Jarrard
3-minute read
“Whoop, what happened?” said real estate executive Gloria Caulfield as boos washed over the podium at her University of Central Florida commencement address.
“Ok, I struck a nerve.”
Caulfield hit the sore spot when she spoke of “the rise of artificial intelligence as the next Industrial Revolution.” She was surprised, and she wasn’t alone. You’ve seen the clips.
At the University of Arizona, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was met with groans after encouraging graduates to embrace AI. “I can hear you,” he said. “There is fear.”
Near Nashville, the founder of record label Big Machine told graduates at Middle Tennessee State University – many who majored in music production – that “AI is rewriting [music] production as we sit here.” As students jeered, Scott Borchetta doubled down: “Deal with it.”
Tough love or tone-deaf?
This isn’t a column about AI. It’s about reading the room. And what it looks like when you don’t.
It’s the equivalent of a healthcare leader celebrating a multi-million-dollar expansion while families are skipping care because they can’t afford to use the system you just built.
To be fair, the graduation speakers were directionally correct that AI will transform work. It already is. It’s extraordinary. Deal with it, as the music guy said.
The issue is the jarring disconnect between the intention of the speakers – opportunity! innovation! the future! – and how it was received. The audience heard instability, uncertainty and replacement.
I mean, were the graduates getting a diploma or a pink slip? One student called the remarks “a knife to the chest,” which is not a good look in a gown.
You’re not the hero
Messages that are well received – even the hard-to-swallow ones – are grounded in empathy for their intended audience. They’re shaped by a deep appreciation for people’s concerns and lives.
Your audience should be the hero of every story you tell, every message you deliver. As a leader, your role is to be their guide on their journey, on their experience.
After all, why should they listen if your messages cast your audience as a supporting character in your own heroic quest? If your messages land as uncaring or clueless, why shouldn’t they boo?
Buzzword booing
Every organization has messages that are being booed silently. You’ve played corporate buzzword bingo.
This may be especially prevalent in healthcare, where we’ve developed an Esperanto that often bears little resemblance to how actual humans speak.
- When leaders say, “efficiency,” employees hear “more work with less people.”
- When leaders say, “digital transformation,” patients hear “Good luck finding a human.”
- When leaders say, “AI augmentation,” caregivers hear “You should be worried.
This isn’t a question of strategy. Efficiency, transformation and augmentation may be good and necessary directions for your organization. It’s a question about the story you tell and the language you use to motivate action. It’s the speech you give that meets people where they are and inspires or challenges them to change their behavior.
Because if your messages aren’t designed to reinforce a behavior or change it, why are you speaking at all?
No gauzy gift wrap
This isn’t to say effective messages should be soft, avoiding difficult truths or packaged in gauzy gift wrap. Don’t hide in the safety of vagueness.
Those graduating students know about AI and the work ahead for them. Likewise, your nurses know about workforce challenges. Your physicians know about the difficulties of patient care.
But they want to know that you see and know them, too.
Do you notice that your physicians are exhausted? That your nurses are anxious? That your patients are fearful?
If not, and your messages clang away, oblivious to the price of gas or the fear of being replaced by a robot, people will boo.
Not literally, perhaps. But organizational eyerolls can come in many forms: disengagement, cynicism, turnover or cross-armed, passive resistance.
Have you ever felt the silence that descends after a leader says something they believed was inspiring but everyone else experienced it as somewhat threatening? If you know, you know.
The room is always talking
The commencement speakers saw their messages stumble over the audience’s reality.
Which may raise an uncomfortable question: Who’s booing you right now?
Your nurses? Your physicians? Your schedulers? Your patients? Your middle managers? Your younger employees who hear about “the future of work” and wonder if they are included?
Here’s the good news: The room is always talking back.
There’s never not a conversation in progress among your staff, among your board, among your patients, among your lawmakers. The question is whether leaders are listening, choose to join it and learn from it.
The room always has something for you to read.
Effective, compelling communication begins before the message is created. It starts with understanding the emotional landscape of the audience receiving it.
Because people don’t hear messages in a vacuum. They hear them inside their fears, hopes and their lives.
Good leaders understand the difference.
Before the booing starts.
