Schmidt stood before the University of Arizona graduates like a wise old sage about to bestow AI wisdom upon them, but the students had other ideas—like giving him a hearty booing session mid-speech. “Sure, machines might take our jobs,” Schmidt proclaimed, as if he’d been channeling his inner oracle, “but we’ll just sip on some fancy algorithms and be fine!” Yet, the crowd felt otherwise: AI was either about to make them rich or render them obsolete, and they weren’t sure which.

Schmidt cited fears that machines would gobble up jobs, the climate would implode, and politics would become a circus—rational concerns indeed. But did he consider that his own Google empire might have been slightly over-optimistic? After all, not every student was ready to be an AI pioneer or a data scientist; some just wanted to avoid becoming the next “factory worker replaced by robots.”

Boos echoed through the arena as Schmidt waxed poetic about AI’s potential—like curing diseases and saving the planet. But for students facing looming tuition debts and job uncertainties, AI felt like a double-edged sword: it promised innovation but also hinted at obsolescence. If Schmidt had been there to hear them, he might have nodded, perhaps even chuckled, acknowledging that the future of work was as uncertain as a neural network’s output.

So, as Schmidt wrapped up his speech with a triumphant “AI for the masses!” the students cheered—or booed—whichever came first. They were ready to embrace AI’s glory and its quirks, but they hoped Schmidt’s vision wasn’t too far from their reality. After all, in the grand scheme of things, who wouldn’t want to be cheered on by AI, even if it meant a few boos along the way?