Florida students boo graduation speaker who called AI ‘next Industrial Revolution’

Though college graduations usually consist of a speaker giving advice to students, one recent ceremony featured students giving the speaker their opinions – loudly. The University of Central Florida’s 2026 graduating class booed as a real estate development executive spoke about how “the rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution” and about “living in a time of profound change”. The crowd of students was so loud that Gloria Caulfield paused, turned away from the podium and threw her hands up in the air. “Woop, what happened?” she asked, before letting out a nervous laugh: “OK, I struck a chord. May I finish?” As the crowd calmed down, Caulfield proceeded. “Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives.” That seemed to cheer them up – and led to a raucous applause. “We’ve got a bipolar topic here, I see,” Caulfield said, as she got back on track, for a third time: “AI capabilities are in the palm of our hands,” she said, before the crowd booed again. “Oh I love it, passion: let’s go,” she said playfully. Like a teacher scolding disruptive students, she continued: “OK, I don’t want any giggles when I say this. We have been through this before,” she said. She segued into a comparison of the current graduates’ plight to when she finished college as the internet started taking off. “I know it sounds amusing, but at that time we had no idea how any of these technologies would impact the world and our lives,” Caulfield said. …