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Google CEO Sundar Pichai says graduates booing AI will shape its future — and live with its consequences
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
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These folks just don't get it.
Let's put aside the discussion of whether their enthusiasm for the tech is merited or not, that is beside the point.
A commencement speaker is not there to talk about themselves or their favorite things. They are not there to teach the graduates anything or try to debate with the graduates.
A commencement speaker is there to honor and respect the graduates. To commend them on how far they have come and express optimism for what they will bring to society in the future. To make them feel appreciated for all they have done and are about to do. To feel inspired by what they have accomplished and the possibilities they bring to society. There has been and will be plenty of opportunity to educate, debate, and convince them, but this is not the venue for any of that.
Speaking about how "awesome" AI is and how they should be grateful for it is disrespecting them by failing to let them be the focus of their own graduation.
it'll be hilarious when all this shitware collapses in on itself under the weight of the actual costs.
And the actual costs are starting to hit https://thenextweb.com/news/microsoft-claude-code-retreat-ai-cost
Yeah, an experienced devops can turn a max claude code subscription into a credible position or two. You give it a directory full of indexed md's and access to your playbooks and it's really good at understanding your logs and using saveguarded tools you write for it.
But those data-centers full of the most advanced purposed built machines are expensive AF, and the tech is moving so fast, those boxes from 2 years ago are already too inadequate.
When the seed capital is gone and the ventures all want their payday, the banks aren't going to foot the bill.
AI is here to stay, but the cutting edge will continue become more exponentially more expensive while still only being incrementally better than humans. Sans some amazing breakthrough, it'll price itself out the the market.
well put.
my only question is how many years of this shit will we need to survive until they realize: there's no such thing as a free lunch? yeah, you can get agentic systems working with accuracy and precision, but will it ever be a panacea to dev costs that justify the trillions - TRILLIONS - of dollars invested for the paltry billions of profit?
That's largely dependent on the "trillionaires" negotiation with the banks. Some of the data centers are already having trouble getting funded.
FWIW, if you REALLY want this shit to stop, push legislation to tax the fuck out of the data centers. They're only building them because of the huge return on investment, tax them in real time on what that return looks like. I think a state and federal tax rate above 40% would greatly slow down this bullshit and get some stuff paid for that we actually need. No hiding behind 'losses'. That Equipment gets taxed locally at market value and the warehouse+water+electric hookups are taxed at such rates that the utilities can expand what is necessary without fucking over the residents.
fuckin'a
Also to rouse and inspire them.
"I'm working on a machine that will make you guys redundant, and then I'll make those booing me see. l'll make you all see." is hardly going to do that.
He would be much better off talking about how it was the stuff of science fiction not long ago, and how the graduates would be helping to push humanity forward, and make real, things that were also previously considered impossible.
Some of the talks are also just really bad. I've seen a few, and they're little more than ads, or bragging about a thing the institution is doing that's unrelated to the graduates themselves. Saw one where the speaker was talking about how the college was using AI for various things. Why even have that in the graduates' speech?
the "Some of you may die" speech by Lord Farquaad from Shrek would be too on-the-nose, tho.