The Kids Are Not Okay With AI, And They Know It...
Authored by Kay Rubacek via The Epoch Times,
Eric Schmidt hadn't finished the word "artificial" before the booing started.
The former Google CEO stood at the University of Arizona's commencement last month, ready to deliver the kind of speech he had probably given a dozen times before: AI as the next great transformation, graduates as its rightful authors.
He got as far as telling them the technology would "touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person, and every relationship you have." The boos rose before he could finish his own sentence. "I can hear you," he said gently. The boos continued, as did Schmidt, who was unable to fully conceal the awkward embarrassment.
He wasn't the only one. A week earlier, at Middle Tennessee State University, Big Machine Records CEO Scott Borchetta told graduates that "AI is rewriting production as we sit here." The boos from graduates started immediately. He responded with tough love: "I know it. Deal with it." But the boos only grew louder.
A week before that, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield barely got through the phrase "next industrial revolution" at the University of Central Florida before the crowd erupted. "Okay, I struck a chord," she said, turning around with her hands up in disbelief and clearly caught off guard.
They were all caught off guard. This isn't how graduations usually go.
Older generations had their own frustrations with the people steering their world, but they rarely stood up at their own commencement, in front of their families, and told a stranger they didn't believe them or what they had to say about their future.
It would be easy to read the response as simple nerves about a tough job market and leave it there. But when you look more closely at how this generation actually lives with technology, their worldview takes a different form.
A recent Gallup survey found that Gen Z's use of AI has leveled off, but their feelings about it have not. Excitement has fallen 14 points in a year, to just 22 percent. And anger has climbed 9 points, to 31 percent. Even among those who use it every day, enthusiasm dropped by 18 points over 12 months. Eight in ten now believe AI will make learning harder. Forty-two percent believe it will hurt their ability to think carefully. Only a quarter believe it will help. Nearly half say the risks of AI in the workplace now outweigh the benefits, which is a sharp rise from the year before. And when asked whose work they actually trust, 69 percent said human work. Only 3 percent said AI's work alone.
A separate Gallup study found that 47 percent of college students have seriously considered changing their major because of what AI is doing to the job market. Sixteen percent have already changed. The students who use AI most, such as in technology, business, and engineering, are also the ones most likely to be reconsidering whether they picked the right field at all.
The kids know the use of artificial intelligence is built into every device they touch throughout their day. It is being wired to replace the skills they were once told to seek in every career they had been advised to pursue.
They know it is being promised to make their lives "better" and "easier," while they feel it is chipping away at their cognitive abilities and sense of challenge and fulfillment, and the adults in the room - or those being offered as role models on commencement stages - are wondering why youth aren't as excited about AI as they expected.
And we should have seen this coming. According to researchers, Gen Z is the first generation in modern memory to test less cognitively capable than their own parents did at the same age, despite having more schooling and more access to information than any generation in human history.
In January, neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath told the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee that attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, reasoning, general IQ - key cognitive performance indicators among young people - have stalled or reversed across much of the developed world over the past two decades. He points to classroom screens and education technology as the cause, arguing the brain was never built to learn the way these tools teach. More tools. More data. Less mind.
For nearly two centuries, every generation had tested smarter than the one before it. Researchers called it the Flynn effect, and it held through wars, depressions, and the collapse of empires. It was a 200-year winning streak. Horvath told lawmakers the streak is over.
The graduates booing those speakers are not confused about this. They are living it. They are the data.
A year ago, I wrote about a different version of this same generational response. Vinyl records were outselling CDs, mostly bought by people under 35. Journaling by hand, crochet, taking silent walks, and a trend called "Posting Zero," in which young people stepped back from performing their lives online. That calm rebellion looked like withdrawal, but it has given way to something louder and bolder. It is a signal that we older folk need to pay attention to.
Older generations tend to see AI the way we see most new technology: as a tool that does or doesn't work, that we adopt or resist on our own terms, in our own time. Younger generations don't have that luxury of distance, and there is a fury at being told how to feel about it by people who built it, sold it, or profited from it first without understanding the consequences of using their youth as part of a larger experiment.
This next generation may not hit all the test scores that their forbears did, but they still have human wisdom intact. Children don't get a vote on the experiments run on their own development, and yet these graduates found a way to cast their vote loudly. Either way, I hope their votes will be counted.
Kay Rubacek is an award-winning educator, filmmaker, author, and mother. Detained in a Chinese prison in 2001 for her human-rights advocacy, she has since dedicated her work to exposing the systems and ideologies that diminish human life and human sovereignty. She has been a contributor to The Epoch Times since 2010.
GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr. explains his 'mysterious' 4-month absence from Congress
OAN Staff Lillian Mann
6:30 PM – Tuesday, June 30, 2026
In an emotional speech on the House floor, New Jersey GOP Representative Tom Kean Jr. revealed the reason behind his four-month long medical leave from Congress, telling his fellow lawmakers that he was in the hospital for depression.
Kean (R-N.J.) disclosed on Tuesday that he was recently diagnosed with depression following a hospitalization for undisclosed health concerns. He added that recovering from the mental illness has taken longer than expected.
“I am a private person by nature … talking about myself has never come naturally. But I believe that I owe an explanation to the people of New Jersey’s 7th District, to my colleagues in this chamber and to the American people for my absence,” he began from the podium Tuesday morning.
“I was given the diagnosis of depression. It is physical, it is emotional and, until you’ve experienced it yourself, it is difficult to fully understand how powerful this illness can be.”
The 57-year-old has missed more than 140 votes during his recovery, amounting to a 100% absence rate, according to the website GovTrack.
“I began to understand not only my diagnosis, but how long depression had been affecting my life,” he continued. “When people hear the word depression, many people think it simply means feeling sad. But depression is so much more than that.”
“When I first informed the public that I was dealing with a medical issue, I was still trying to understand what was happening myself,” he said of the secrecy of his absence.
Despite feeling hesitant when his doctors recommended he stayed at the hospital, he shared that he was ultimately grateful for the decision.
“When I said I hope to return in a matter of weeks, I believed it. Those were the best estimates that the doctor could provide. But as the over 48 million of my fellow Americans being treated for this illness have come to discover, there is no timeline for healing. There is no timeline for recovery. Only the work of getting better one day at a time,” he said.
“Today I am grateful that I listened to my doctors … I am grateful that I accepted help. Because today I stand before you healthier, stronger and excited to return to the work that I love.”
Although Kean’s condition was not made public until Tuesday, the details were apparently known by Capitol Hill colleagues –including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — who said earlier this month, “I do know what his health issue is, but he’s asked me not to disclose that, and I’m going to honor that.”
Johnson also emphasized at the time that Kean’s absence is “not a scandalous thing at all,” telling reporters that “people deal with health issues. Maybe that’s a news flash for you, but even members of Congress get sick as well.”
During his absence, Kean secured the Republican nomination for a third term representing New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District after running unopposed in the primary. He will face Rebecca Bennett (D-N.J.) in November.
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