Jeremy Scott walked onto the stage at the Kansas City Art Institute on May 16 with what looked like a perfectly serviceable commencement speech. Generic congratulations. Inspirational platitudes about limitless power and new beginnings.
Then he told the graduates the truth: it was all written by artificial intelligence.
The crowd didn’t boo. They erupted.
Scott tore up the AI-generated text and told students something that resonates far beyond a graduation ceremony. “You don’t want the AI overlords telling you what’s right and what’s wrong,” he said.
It’s a statement that feels almost quaint given the tension surrounding AI at other recent graduation ceremonies. Earlier this month, students openly booed Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, and real estate executive Gloria Caulfield when they discussed AI at separate graduation events. Scott Borchetta, CEO of Big Machine Records, drew immediate backlash after his remarks about AI’s impact on music and media at Middle Tennessee State University.
The difference? Scott didn’t come to defend the technology. He came to warn against it.
The Uncomfortable Truth About AI’s Limits
Scott’s argument cuts deeper than typical AI skepticism. He didn’t just say AI is bad or threatening. He identified something specific: artificial intelligence fundamentally cannot do what human artists do.
“It can’t have an original idea,” Scott said. “It can’t even differentiate the difference between a good idea, a unique idea, and one that’s mediocre.”
That distinction matters, especially for a room full of art students entering a business landscape where their value is increasingly under question. These graduates are hitting the job market at the exact moment when companies are using AI to remake entry-level positions. At least a dozen major corporations have already cited improved efficiency from AI as a reason to lay off employees this year.
But the workforce concerns are only part of the story. According to recent Pew Research Center data, many Americans are genuinely uncomfortable with how much AI is infiltrating everyday life. There’s also growing resistance to the massive data centers required to power the technology.
Why Some Speakers Get It and Others Don’t
Steve Wozniak, Apple’s cofounder, seemed to understand the anxieties in the room when he spoke at Grand Valley State University earlier this month. His approach was refreshingly simple. He told graduates they already possess what matters most: “Actual intelligence.”
That message landed because it wasn’t dismissive of the technology itself. It was affirming of human capability. Scott’s approach worked for similar reasons, though he took a more confrontational route by literally destroying an AI product on stage.
The speakers who drew boos made a different calculation. They spoke as though AI’s advancement were inevitable, even beneficial, without fully reckoning with how graduates feel about their own prospects in a world where machines are increasingly making decisions.
What This Actually Says About Technology
There’s something revealing about which messages resonate at graduation ceremonies. These events are supposed to be aspirational. Students want to hear that their skills, their creativity, their humanity matters.
When commencement speakers position AI as the future that students simply need to accept, they’re not being inspirational. They’re being dismissive. They’re telling a room full of young artists and thinkers that the thing they’re trained to do isn’t as valuable as it used to be.
Scott’s message was different. He argued that artists aren’t becoming less crucial. They’re becoming more crucial precisely because they do something machines cannot: they “decide what truth feels like.” They’re “a bender of reality while being a mirror to society.”
Whether you believe that or not, it’s a statement that treats the audience as though their future still belongs to them.
The real divide at graduation ceremonies this spring isn’t between those who like or dislike AI. It’s between speakers who acknowledge the legitimate concerns in the room and those who expect graduates to simply get comfortable with technological shifts they didn’t choose and can’t control.
