"As a rule, a college graduation is a miserable affair. If you're an outgoing senior, you have wait around for hours on end in the sweltering heat, all while hungover and wearing a full-length black gown. If you're a parent, you have to sit in a folding chair in the middle of a lawn for the same amount of time, seething about how you had to park your car so far away from everything. Everyone in attendance just wants to get to the roll call, and even that part is torture because, even if your last name starts with an A, they still make you stay in your seat until Zachary Zzyrowitz receives the final diploma."
"But before you get to that roll call, you must to endure an endless procession of deans introducing other deans, students who aren't your kid receiving prestigious awards, and, worst of all, the keynote speaker. Let's see what kind of sage wisdom this year's crop of speakers had for tomorrow's leaders! That's Gloria Caulfield, Vice President of Strategic Alliances at the Tavistock Real Estate Development company in Orlando, Fla. Caulfield was tapped to deliver the keynote graduation address at the University of Central Florida last week, and boy did she kill it."
"It began when Caulfield declared to the crowd that, "The rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution." UCF grads booed her for that one. Caulfield reacted to the boos with a Bari Weiss-esque, "I struck a chord!" and then attempted, in vain, to speechify her way through it. The UCF kids kept on giving her shit. Organically, I might add: "We weren't, like, booing or anything from the start," Alexander Rose Tyson, 22, a graduate in animation and visualization, said in an interview."
"But when the speech turned toward A.I. "glazing" - excessive praise - emotions took over. "It wasn't one person that really started the booing," Tyson said. "It was just sort of like a collective,"
Graduation ceremonies are portrayed as long, miserable events for both graduates and parents, involving waiting in heat, discomfort, and delays before roll call. The program includes repeated introductions by deans, awards for students who are not the attendee’s child, and a keynote speaker. At the University of Central Florida, Gloria Caulfield, Vice President of Strategic Alliances at a real estate development company, delivered the keynote address. She stated that the rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution, and graduates booed. She responded as if she had struck a chord and tried to continue speaking, but the crowd continued reacting negatively. A graduate described the booing as collective and intensified when the speech shifted toward excessive AI praise.
#college-graduation-ceremonies #keynote-speeches #artificial-intelligence #student-reactions #university-of-central-florida
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